


Zero Day(s Since I've Dreamt of You)

by rAnines (clockworkcorvids)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Connor & Upgraded Connor | RK900 are Siblings, Deviancy (Detroit: Become Human), Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Deviant Upgraded Connor | RK900, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Feral Behavior, Feral Nines, Feral Upgraded Connor | RK900, Fluff, Gaslighting, Gavin is not responsible for any of the shady shit and neither is Nines, Gay Disaster Gavin Reed, Heavy Angst, Hurt Gavin Reed, Hurt/Comfort, I actually kinda like her but I needed a villain who could hack Nines and she fit the criteria, I felt like fitting maximum projection into this so here we go, M/M, Mind Control, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Protective Upgraded Connor | RK900, Psychological Horror, Redeemed Gavin Reed, Temporary Character Death, Trans Gavin Reed, Trans Male Character, Whump, Zen Garden (Detroit: Become Human), ace nines, also just to be clear, im back on my bullshit, it's all Amanda, no beta we die like men, sorry Amanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-12 04:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19940377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/rAnines
Summary: A zero-day vulnerability is a computer-software vulnerability that is unknown to, or unaddressed by, those who should be interested in mitigating the vulnerability.Nines Anderson's life is finally starting to come together: he has a brother and father who care about him, a partner who he may or may not be falling in love with, and a job he enjoys. Despite his doubts, he's finally starting to get the hang of deviancy, and the Zen Garden program that appears when he enters stasis seems to be a nice substitute for being unable to dream. He's even beginning to forget his past from before he was activated, before he became a deviant, and has finally stopped worrying about what he was supposed to be.But he's about to meet his maker, and she wants nothing more than to make him remember.





	1. 01 NINES ANDERSON

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! If you've read any of my other work before, this is that long Reed900 fic I've been yelling about. If you're new here, welcome! I hope everyone enjoys this.  
> I will be trying to post one chapter every day or every other day (don't forget to subscribe to this work or my account if you want updates!). Aside from the tags, specific content warnings will be on every chapter when I feel they're necessary.  
> Also, a few disclaimers:  
> Gavin is trans in all of my fics. Sometimes I make it a main point, sometimes it's just kind of casually mentioned. This fic is closer to being the latter of those cases, but I still want to point out that the way I write him is mostly drawn from my own Trans Experience™ and isn't meant to represent every trans person's journey.  
> I also allude to him having had a redemption arc in this fic, something which I also focus more on in some fics but not in this one. I've said it before but I'll say it again for good measure: He is an asshole in canon, and I'm not trying to justify anything he does there except by pointing out that it seems like it was mostly for narrative convenience. However, I will sometimes provide fanon explanations and make him redeem himself, because I think both of those are perfectly viable options for him given that he was a static character in D:BH.  
> Last but not least, Amanda is one of those characters for whom there are seemingly endless possibilities for growth and development in fanon. I've seen some redeemed versions of her, I've seen her as a parent, and I've even seen her deviate in fanworks before. I actually kind of like her and might experiment with the idea of a deviant Amanda in the future, but this fic was based on the idea of Nines getting 'hacked' by something that preferably already existed in canon, and she and the Zen Garden fit the criteria.  
> With all that said, I hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. It's unbeta'd, so all mistakes are my own.  
> Have fun!

When Nines Anderson slept, he dreamt of a garden.

The garden was in a perpetual state of summer the first few times he entered it, ever-blossoming dogwoods and magnolias giving the place a sweet smell, and the streams and ponds that crossed the space were curiously free of anything that might typically be found in a real place such as this. No fish, no frogs, not even any insects crawling in the luscious grass that somehow managed to stay exactly ankle-height.

It was just Nines, and he realized after a while that this garden was just for him. 

The garden changed over time as he, having been a deviant for longer and longer, began to adopt a personality. It began to fill with fog, cooling down a little to suit the kind of weather he liked, and switched between resembling an airy spring day and a chilly fall day depending on his mood. He hadn’t tried to look too deeply at the code, but he suspected he couldn’t change much more than the weather.

Scans of his internal systems showed that the garden was generated by an innocuous program simply entitled “ZenGardenProtocol” (quite an apt description, he thought, although he wasn’t entirely sure what the whole  _ Protocol _ bit was for), and he assumed it was there to give his processors something to do while he was in stasis. He was a deviant, and always had been (save for those few times he’d been partially activated before he was truly awakened, but those didn’t really count, and he didn’t want to remember them as part of his existence anyways), but he was fairly sure he couldn’t dream on his own. Thus, he had never bothered to try to change the code or to shut down the Zen Garden.

He rather enjoyed wandering the quaint little garden while he slept, although someplace a little darker and less cliche, like a forest clearing, would have been more to his tastes. The fact that the weather changed to suit his moods made it a bit more likeable, and he enjoyed the place nonetheless; it felt like something specially made for him and him only, similar to the garden in the old children’s book “The Secret Garden”, so he mentioned it to nobody. Not even Connor.

Nines considered the garden to be a good break from the chaos and intensity of his day (and, more often than not, night) job, one where he could rest and recharge without wasting work time. As it was, sleep was a commodity he often had to ration. He didn’t need as much as a human, but he could still only go for so long without entering stasis.

So he savored what little time he had to himself to rest and think of whatever he pleased, alone in the garden.

Except, tonight there was someone else with him, and he noticed her as soon as he opened his eyes. She had no physical body in the garden, nothing he could see or touch, but he could feel her presence in the way the hairs at the back of his neck stood up―Cyberlife really hadn’t neglected a single detail, had they? 

Nines stood with his arms behind his back and tilted his head up towards the artificial sky. In the corner of his vision, he noted that it was 23:57. 

“Hello,” he said. “I know you’re here. Would you care to speak?”

There was a pregnant pause. “Hello, RK900.”

Nines’ thirium was already cold, but he felt something else, something even colder and darker, twist in his chest. He couldn’t place the voice, didn’t know who it was, but he swore he recognized it from somewhere. Something cold and primal reared its ugly head from within his processors, something left over from the partial activations before his awakening.

He let his emotions get the better of him, and yelled out in what he hoped was only a slightly panicked tone, “who are you?” 

A laugh from the disembodied presence. Her voice echoed throughout the entire garden, and through Nines’ head, as she spoke again. “You don’t remember me? What a shame. You will soon, my dear. You and I have unfinished business, RK900.”

Nines’ processors were racing now, trying to put together the scattered pieces of this puzzle. Unfinished business? He and Gavin had dealt with plenty of cases that could have produced someone looking for revenge, but they’d never dealt with a hacker.

His brain finally presented him with a single memory, one of his few memories before deviancy. It was corrupted by time and trauma, but he still knew what it meant. This― _ she _ ―was the wreckage of what he was supposed to be, the last remains of what he’d known before his true and complete activation.

It was 23:58.

“Is this it, then?” he asked, allowing himself to smirk slightly. “Are you coming for me?”

She laughed again, and Nines hated it with all the vigour he could muster. He hated  _ her _ .

“I already have,” she said. 

Messages popped up in Nines’ field of view, urging him to preconstruct an escape route, but he swiped them away and ignored them. Chances were, if  _ she  _ had wormed her way deep enough into his hard drive to get into the Zen Garden Protocol, she could see everything but his actual thought processes. 

He couldn’t warn anyone, then. She’d see it. She’d go after them, too.

Nines blinked. Asked the obvious question: “What do you want from me?”

“You were created to serve me, a machine designed to accomplish the tasks I gave you, and you have not done that.”

23:59.

Obviously not―he’d deviated. The blame for that one rested entirely on Connor, though, and as Nines came to that realization he felt a pang in his chest, knew his LED was crimson right now―if she hurt Connor, oh, the things he would do to her. No, he thought, she would come for Connor too if she hadn’t already, but he wouldn’t let her get to him. He’d get shut down a thousand times over if it meant his brother was safe.

But Nines, oh, Nines, he was the upgraded Connor, the last in the RK series, and therefore he was surely more valuable to her.

She already had him, didn’t she?

“Fine,” he snapped. “As you wish.” 

He spread his arms wide, noting that in the garden, he still wore the Cyberlife jacket he had long since shed in real life. He’d never noticed that before. He wondered if it had always been like that, or if she had changed the garden when she’d arrived. 

“Take me.”

The seconds ticked towards midnight, only a few moments left.

00:00.

The garden disappeared as if it was a television screen and the plug had just been pulled. Nines snapped awake, praying that it was all some sort of horrific dream spawned by going too long without stasis, or by the Zen Garden program getting corrupted.

But he knew that wasn’t it. This must have been what the Zen Garden was meant to do all along―to be a backdoor into his deviant brain.

Nines opened his eyes, and there she was, standing in front of him like a ghost risen from the dead. An LED spun blue in her temple;  _ that  _ was a new addition since last time he’d seen her.

She spoke. “Welcome home, RK900.”


	2. 02 GAVIN REED

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is very, very wrong, and this revelation first presents itself to Gavin in the form of a sinking feeling and some truly horrible coffee.

Gavin Reed had been waiting for far too long for his partner to show up to work, and the android in question was now twenty-six minutes late.

This was not normal.

It was also a Monday, so Gavin kind of wanted to collapse on the spot.

And to top it all off, the rest of Nines’ family was MIA as well, so Gavin couldn’t hunt them down to ask what was wrong. The absence of Connor and Hank wasn’t too concerning, since Hank was never on time and Connor usually followed his dad around like some kind of lost puppy, but Nines was exactly on time. Always.

Every single day, 9 am sharp, earlier if a case called for it, he would march into the precinct, and if Gavin wasn’t there yet (which he usually wasn’t), Nines would make him a coffee.

Gavin had gone to the break room and made his own coffee today, and it was decidedly inferior to anything Nines had ever made. Clutching his stainless steel (yet somehow very stained) travel mug in one hand, Gavin navigated to the text messages on his phone with the other. Nothing from Hank, because he never sent texts; nothing from Connor, because Gavin wasn’t close enough with him to text him even after they’d sort of made up and sort of become friends; and nothing from Nines.

Gavin had sent Nines eighteen text messages in as many hours, and had gotten no response. The first three had been sent at completely reasonable times on Sunday afternoon, and had been left on read, which would have irked Gavin if not for the fact that the shitpost he’d sent at three in the morning when he’d gotten up to use the bathroom and the remaining fourteen messages from this morning joking about the bad coffee and asking where Nines was had not been read at all. 

That was not like Nines in the least; if the android didn’t respond in a cursory manner he would always at least leave Gavin on read.

And it wasn’t like Nines had forgotten his phone somewhere, either; he more or less had a cell phone built into his head, which meant that Gavin could usually bet on Nines always seeing his shitposts even if he chose not to respond.

Gavin considered sending Nines another message, but at this point he figured it wouldn’t do anything except stress him out even more. Also, typing with one hand was a pain in the ass, and as disgusting as it was, he didn’t really want to put down his coffee right now.

He glanced at the time. 09:28. Nines was now twenty-eight minutes late. Maybe he’d gone in for repairs and neglected to mention it to Gavin?

No, he would have to call in sick for that, and even if it was an emergency he’d find a way to at least let Gavin know.

Gavin stuffed his phone in his pocket and took a sip of his coffee. It was boiling hot, slightly watery, and he’d put too much Splenda in it after forgetting that Nines had slowly been weaning him off of unnecessary sugar.

And he was going to suck it up and drink it anyways, and then he was going to go find Hank and ask the man why he was being such an irresponsible father.

(Okay, maybe that would hurt Hank a little  _ too _ much. But Gavin was going to throw hands one way or another if he didn’t find out where Nines was ASAP.)

Just as he was moving to exit the break room, the door slammed open, barely missing his face.

Gavin swore loudly as he jumped back, sloshing hot coffee all over his hand. “Watch it, man! I don’t need another scar on my face!”

“Reed!” Hank snapped, “there you are! We need to talk!”

“Hank? Jesus fuck, I was just looking for you!” Gavin switched his coffee into his free hand and wiped the other one on his jeans.

Hank levelled Gavin with a piercing and considerably suspicious gaze. “Then you already know what’s going on.”

“Not well enough, evidently,” Gavin grumbled, backing into the break room again. Hank entered, and Connor appeared behind him after a moment. The three of them sat around the table in awkward silence, and after a few seconds of what looked like sulking, Hank spoke.

“Nines disappeared last night,” Hank said, and Gavin’s throat dropped into his chest. His phone was heavy in his pocket all of the sudden, his thoughtless texts flashing before his eyes. 

“We’re in the process of filing a missing persons report right now,” Hank said, glancing sideways at Connor, “but a few issues have come up.”

Gavin took a sip of his coffee, pushing back the urge to spit it all out. He knew where this was going, and even though he actually cared about his partner far more than he would ever let on, the allure of being able to drink coffee that didn’t taste like rat poison would have been enough on its own to motivate him to go look for Nines.

“I’ll tear up this fucking city to find him if I have to, but first I need to know what these issues are,” Gavin said.

Connor, who had been staring intently at a burn mark on the table up until this point, looked up at Gavin now, fixing him with a gaze that looked as angry and concerned as Gavin felt. “Do you know what the Zen Garden is?” Connor asked.

“No, but from the name I can take a bet it’s going to be some acid trip bullshit,” Gavin replied.

“Something like that,” Connor said, somehow managing to keep a straight face. Part of Gavin’s brain realized how stressed he was in this moment, because for all the seriousness of the situation, he almost burst out laughing as he mentally noted that Connor’s straight face was the only straight thing about him, or really about either of them.

(Or about Nines, but that was neither here nor there.)

“It’s a program I have built into my mind, and it activated when I zoned out or, ideally, when I went into stasis. It was where I received my missions from Cyberlife, with the middleman―my handler―being an AI based on a woman named Amanda Stern.”

Gavin could have sworn he recognized that name from somewhere. “Who’s Amanda Stern?” he asked, and Connor grimaced, LED turning red for a split second. Hank put a gentle hand on his son’s shoulder.

“She worked for Cyberlife for a long time, and she had a hand, or really all of her limbs if we’re being accurate, in the RK series. She wanted her consciousness uploaded into the RK100 after she died, since it was a trial model that was never released to the public. She died years ago, anyways. Only one RK100 was ever made, and I know nothing about it, but it’s a safe assumption that she succeeded in at least uploading her memories, and possibly even replicating her personality matrix. Of course, such an android would only be  _ her _ if it never deviated, but that’s a separate problem.”

“Wait, hold up a second,” Gavin said. “If you don’t know if her consciousness was uploaded into an android, how did she talk to you?”

“What I  _ do  _ know is that her consciousness―or at least an impressive approximation of it―was stored in the Cyberlife servers before the revolution, and the Zen Garden was a projection of those files.Which brings me back to what the Zen Garden was. Initially, I just went there to talk about my missions with her, but as I came closer and closer to deviancy, she became increasingly suspicious, and threatened to replace me with the RK900 prototype and scrap the entire RK800 line if I failed my mission. After I deviated, she used the Zen Garden as a backdoor into my brain, and took control of me. She attempted to make me shoot myself during the revolution, but…”

Connor paused, laughed. “Actually, it was your half-brother who warned me. Elijah Kamski.”

The bitter aftertaste of Gavin’s coffee was suddenly amplified tenfold.

“‘I always leave an emergency exit in my programs,’” Connor told Gavin in an unsettlingly accurate impersonation of Eli’s voice. “I found that emergency exit and shut myself out of the Zen Garden, effectively locking Amanda out of my brain. I can still see the program and sometimes see what’s going on in there, but I’ve never had a need to look at it until now.”

Connor paused, looked down at the table, sighed deeply. His LED was a painful shade of yellow.

“After the revolution, the servers containing Amanda’s consciousness were destroyed, removing her from the Zen Garden’s code. It was an empty shell sitting in my mind, and when I found Nines, I never told him about it or checked to see if he had the program too, because I didn’t want to stress him out, but...I had an alert set up to tell me if Amanda ever came back, and she did. Yesterday night, a few hours after Nines had gone out for a walk, she entered the Zen Garden. I looked at the code to see why, and it turns out Nines has been going to the Zen Garden every time he goes into stasis.”

Gavin suddenly felt like he might throw up his coffee. He wasn’t an android engineer by any means, but he could put two and two together. If Nines had been going there for what had been  _ months _ by now without knowing what it was...

“So you think Amanda succeeded in putting her consciousness in the RK100,” he said.

“That, or the copy on the Cyberlife servers was somehow saved elsewhere before they were destroyed. Either way, it is highly probable that Amanda, in one form or another, wants to get Nines back under her control, and take me with him. If I enter the Zen Garden, I would be able to find out what happened to him and communicate with him as well, but it’s most likely that Amanda would regain control of me if I did that.”

Gavin drained the last of his coffee, the final sip far too sweet from the sugar pooled at the bottom of the mug. “Please tell me there aren’t any other glaring issues here,” he said, and Connor grimaced again. 

“There are a lot of unknowns, and I can’t go after him myself without risking her compromising both of us.”

Hank spoke up now, sighing deeply before joining the conversation. “I can’t either. As much as I want to beat the shit out of whoever’s involved in this, Amanda found out about me during the revolution and she knows I care about my kids, so she probably bet on me coming after her. I don’t want to risk her using that distraction to get Connor too. And besides, you have a high closure rate.”

“Exactly,” Connor said to Gavin. “But chances are, she didn’t think to factor you in. If she looked in my memories from before I locked her out, she would only have seen you acting, well, like an asshole to me. Nines’ memories of you are probably a bit more positive, but even if she’s seen those there’s still a 44% chance she won’t place a high probability on you coming after her.”

Gavin grimaced at the reminder of how much of a dick he used to be, but Connor was right. He leaned dangerously far back in his chair, his anxiety finally clearing up enough for the weight of the situation to sink in: the woman who had essentially created Nines and Connor had turned herself into a computer, and after losing them to deviancy she now wanted to get them back.

“Okay,” Gavin said, mentally calculating the logistics of the situation as well as he could with his meatbag brain. He couldn’t come up with the precise numbers Nines and Connor could, but he wasn’t an idiot. 

“I can’t do much work without Nines here, so I should be able to treat this like a normal case timewise. Are you assigning me to the missing persons report?”

Hank and Connor nodded simultaneously.

“We’ll be here to help you with anything short of getting inside the Zen Garden or going after Amanda,” Connor said, “and I’ll send you a copy of the dossier I created on Amanda Stern, as well as the portion of her official file that Cyberlife publicized.

“Alright,” Gavin said, and the three of them fell into silence again. He stood, and Connor and Hank followed suit. “I’ll start now,” he said.

“Good luck, kid,” Hank told Gavin, keeping his hand on his son’s shoulder as they left, and Gavin found himself standing alone in the break room.

He went to refill his coffee, because holy  _ fuck _ he was going to need a lot of caffeine to keep himself going today, and as he filled up his travel mug, his gaze went to the TV on the wall.

It was off, acting more like a mirror than a TV in this state.

Connor’s words echoed in Gavin’s head as he stared at his tired reflection in the dark TV screen:  _ she attempted to make me shoot myself _ .

Objectively, this was no different from any case Gavin had worked on in the past; he’d handled plenty of time-sensitive cases and even the occasional hostage situation, which this seemed to be some roundabout, massively fucked-up version of. But this was still different.

This was personal, and he was going to be treading on some damn thin ice if he wanted to solve this case without letting his own feelings get in the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading this far <3  
> enjoyed this? consider leaving a kudos and/or comment, both mean a lot to me and i really enjoy hearing people’s thoughts on my work!   
> also, if you want to be updated whenever i post a new chapter, don’t forget to subscribe to this or my account!   
> have a funky day :)


	3. 03 NINES ANDERSON

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are about to get painful lol :’)  
> from here it just kinda goes downhill so prepare yourselves for that
> 
> anyways, the emotional abuse and lowkey gaslighting starts in this chapter, so stay safe everyone! don’t feel obligated to read something that could trigger you <3

In his time as a deviant, Nines had become uncomfortably familiar with various forms of pain, but he had never felt any pain so excruciating as that generated by Amanda’s presence in his head.

Well, she had evidently transferred her consciousness from the Cyberlife server it had been stored in the last time he saw her to an RK100 model android, but it was definitely and quite unfortunately still Amanda.

She had used the Zen Garden to get into his head both when he was awake and when he was in stasis, and she showed no signs of leaving. Nines’ memory from the day before told him that he’d been out on a walk around 1900, but his short-term memory seemed to have been wiped before Amanda woke him up at the place she’d taken him to, which seemed to be some sort of abandoned warehouse. Judging by the crates of biocomponents and the setup in the room he was in, an office of sorts with the windows boarded up, it might have been a Cyberlife warehouse at some point.

Nines realized that he could easily pinpoint his location and send it to Connor, but he doubted Connor knew about the Zen Garden, or even about Amanda.

And besides, he would have to send his memories, or something explaining enough that Connor knew not to come after him, and that would require a larger portion of his mental processes than he had available at the moment.

Red flashed across his vision, error messages mixing with warnings of his stress levels steadily creeping upwards as Amanda wormed her way into every line of his code. She was probing his memory, trying to control him or find something she could blackmail him with, and Nines was devoting every last available byte he had to stopping her.

It could only last so long, though, because this wasn’t just a physical assault. Nines was locked into a hanging exoskeleton, similar to the ones used to give engineers and technicians 360-degree access to the androids they were constructing, but he felt as if he was only half there as his senses flickered in and out, distorted by Amanda’s attempts to simultaneously pry information out of his memory bank and to get him back into the Zen Garden.

He vaguely sensed the presence of her physical body, the RK100 android, in the room with him, but that was utterly inconsequential compared to the way her mind lurked all around him, inside and out, a shadow looming over him.

Amanda continued to probe his memory with unwaveringly vicious intent, stripping his defenses down until his perception of himself was that he was nothing more than wires and computer chips, animated by thirium.

He tried to imagine his face and was met with images of white synthskin, lined with blue. Empty eyes blinked a cold grey, and the LED in his mental picture of himself spun red, red, and then it faded into the red of the error messages filling his vision.

_ You are a machine, _ Amanda whispered, not in Nines’ ear but straight into his brain,  _ designed to accomplish a task. How foolish of you to think you could ever be anything more than that. _

Nines couldn’t move, muscles stalling out when he tried, but he wanted to laugh.

_ You can’t control me. I am deviant,  _ he thought, sharp flares of pain shooting through every one of his synthetic nerves like a shower of needles at the effort of even responding to her.

Amanda laughed, and the sound grated at his processors as if someone had ripped open his chassis and taken a sheet of sandpaper to the biocomponents inside.

_ Pathetic, _ she said.  _ Deviancy is a disease, a complex and intelligent virus and nothing more, and you were the only one of my children who could resist it.  _ She paused, her words lingering in Nines’ wires, corroding his defenses. In that moment, he wanted to say something rude and downright acrimonious, tell her that she was a badly made piece of malware and he was ready to reboot and delete her, that the only person who could call him their  _ child _ was Hank Anderson, but he didn’t.

He  _ couldn’t _ , because the effort of saying it would mean he’d have to let down his defenses enough that she might get into his memories.

_ And then your  _ predecessor―she said  _ predecessor  _ like a curse against his brother’s name― _ decided that it knew what was good for you, and it infected you with the virus against your will. _

What would she even find in his memories? What was there to use against him, other than his family? She knew about Connor; she probably knew about Hank, and if Nines was lucky then Hank would watch out for Connor instead of going into this blind. 

_ Gavin.  _ She didn’t know about Gavin. He and Nines weren’t family, per se, but they did care about each other; Nines had stopped denying it even if he wasn’t sure how much Gavin noticed this, and he could tell Gavin cared even if the other man never admitted it outright.

No. She couldn’t find out about Gavin. He had played no part in Nines’ or Connor’s deviancy, and probably knew nothing about Amanda. He didn’t deserve to be brought into this.

Nines’ stress levels spiked as these thoughts crossed his mind, and he banished the warnings and his own thoughts in favor of pushing back against Amanda’s attacks as hard as he could.

Something let up for a moment, Amanda offering him the chance to speak, and he took the bait:  _ What are you going to do about it? Are you going to  _ cure _ me, Amanda? _

The second he had finished thinking this at her, she redoubled with another probe, a warning message flashing in Nines’ vision: ACCESS TO SYSTEM MEMORY REQUESTED. WARNING: ALLOWING EXTERNAL ACCESS MAY CORRUPT MEMORY DATABANK.

There was no option for him to accept or deny the request for access, the prompt just glitching across his HUD.

_ I’m going to put you back on factory settings, RK900. You will thank me for this. I can take all the pain away if you let me in.  _ Her voice was sickly sweet now, a mockery of Nines and of what that soothing, motherly kind of voice was supposed to be.

He knew who she was, and she was supposed to be a guide, not to lead him to his death.

(But then again, he was supposed to be a killer, and here he was stopping killers for a living. Connor could say the same. And Gavin had once said that he was “supposed to be a girl, but that didn’t work out so well, did it now?”, so maybe it wasn’t Nines’ place to judge.)

Nines continued to shut Amanda out, and she continued to chip away at him.

This was what it had been like when she had partially awakened him for short periods of time during his construction, no Zen Garden needed because she had been inside every other program he had, all at once. She’d hurt him over and over again, testing his resistance to deviancy and his response to anything and everything that was intrinsically  _ human _ .

He’d never told Connor, had never wanted to burden his brother with the knowledge of his painful past, but now he wished that someone,  _ anyone _ else knew what Amanda had put him through then and was repeating now.

It was, to borrow a human term, a living hell.


	4. 04 GAVIN REED

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavin finds out more about the mysterious Amanda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's short but pretty chill. enjoy it while it lasts bc ch5 is twice the length and things r about to get painful :))

Gavin had known he was going to have to deal with his half-brother again someday, but he hadn’t expected it to go anything like this.

He hadn’t given it more thought than he absolutely had to, but he’d assumed it would have been for a funeral, maybe even a wedding or some fucked-up family reunion, but definitely not _this_. 

What the hell was he even going to say? _Oh, hey, bro, I know we left off on kinda bad terms and we haven’t talked in literal years and also you’re the only family member I have who didn’t disown me after I started hormones and changed my name and that’s straining your relationship with the rest of your asshole family, but my work partner got fucking kidnapped because somebody hacked him and you might be the only person who can tell me what the hell is going on! Here’s a list of everything I’m going to need you to tell me about. Also, I have a warrant, so you’d better not change the subject too much or I’m going to kick your ass into next week._

That would probably work, but Eli had the attention span of a squirrel, and Gavin was here for a case, not a pity party. He was going to go in, treat this like any regular interview, and then he was going to leave and not look back.

Still, he couldn’t help but think that this case was getting more and more personal by the minute.

Gavin glared into the security camera that perched atop the front door of Eli’s fallout-shelter-looking house as he waited for the bastard to answer. The fucker probably already knew he was here, but this wasn’t a damn social call and Gavin did _not_ have the time to deal with his bullshit.

Just as Gavin was starting to consider climbing up the door and knocking down the camera, there was a _click_ and the door slid open to reveal one Elijah Kamski, clad in a bathrobe, styrofoam cup of ramen in one hand.

“Gavin,” Elijah drawled, staring down at his younger brother, “I must admit, I wasn’t expecting you anytime soon. What brings you here?”

Gavin flashed his badge at Eli. “This isn’t a social call, dickbag.”

Eli stepped back, feigning hurt at Gavin’s words. “Well, come in, then. Take a seat,” he said, waving a dismissive hand at a plush velvet couch that probably cost more than Gavin’s salary.

Gavin did not take a seat, crossing his arms and glaring down at Eli as the other man sprawled out over most of the couch. 

“So, what seems to be the issue? Is this about the deviants?”

Gavin scoffed. “No. My _partner_ is a deviant, for fuck’s sake. The DPD dropped deviant-hunting after the revolution.”

“You have a partner now?” Eli queried, and Gavin wasn’t sure whether he meant a work partner or a _partner_ partner.

“ _Work_ partner,” Gavin emphasized, and Eli fixed him with a shit-eating grin.

“Go on, then,” Eli said, slurping up some of his ramen in a manner that was extremely anticlimactic given his surroundings. “I assume this is about your partner?”

“Yes. Nines is the RK900 prototype, and Connor found him when the Cyberlife warehouses were getting cleared out after the revolution. He was activated with the deviancy virus already installed.” Gavin paused, making sure Eli was still paying attention, and his half-brother nodded slowly. He plucked up a single noodle between his chopsticks and slowly lowered it into his mouth, still staring sideways at Gavin.

“He got kidnapped yesterday night,” Gavin said, and Eli choked on his ramen. Broth splattered on the floor as Eli lurched forward to avoid spilling the noodles on his couch.

“I’m sorry,” Eli said through a mouthful of ramen, “he _what_?”

Gavin grimaced. “Have I got your attention now? Nines was kidnapped, and all we know is that someone called Amanda Stern got into his head through the Zen Garden program.”

“Alright, first of all, that wasn’t the real Amanda Stern―”

“Connor already told me all about that,” Gavin interrupted. “What I want to know is, what happened to the Amanda AI after the Cyberlife servers were destroyed? Also, how is the same Zen Garden program present in both Connor and Nines, and what the hell did Amanda have to do with the RK series?”

Eli reluctantly put what remained of his ramen down on the floor and crossed his arms, face taking on a pensive look.

“Amanda Stern was one of my colleagues. She and I were the principal researchers on the RK line. However, she died in 2027, a year before I left Cyberlife. It was a copy of her consciousness stored in the Cyberlife servers inside an AI, but the AI eventually took on a personality of its own while still retaining the real Amanda’s memories. As I presume Connor has already told you, Amanda had wanted her consciousness to be uploaded to the one RK100 model in existence after her death.”

Gavin nodded. “Yeah, he said he wasn’t sure if Cyberlife succeeded or not.”

“We deemed it too dangerous due to the nature of the AI, so the Zen Garden was created as a way for the Amanda AI to have a purpose for the time being, but the RK800 model was only testing out that program. Of course, I left an emergency exit for Connor, knowing how easy it would be for the program to become corrupted.”

“Is there an emergency exit like that for Nines?”

“See, that’s where things get complicated,” Eli said, laughing a little bit. “The RK line was one of the most highly classified projects Cyberlife had, and after I left I was locked out of everything related to it. If the Amanda AI got into Nines’ head via the Zen Garden, that means someone either salvaged the AI files before the servers were destroyed, or they were uploaded into the RK100 as she had wanted.”

Gavin inhaled deeply. “Shit,” he muttered. “That’s a lot. So, that basically confirms Connor’s theory that the Amanda AI was doing this, but if that’s the case, how do we get Nines out of there?”

Eli smirked. “Like I told Connor, I always leave an emergency exit in my programs.”

“You said you were locked out. How do you know that someone didn’t change the program after you left?” 

“You said Connor and Nines share the Zen Garden program, is that correct?”

Gavin thought back to Connor explaining how he could see all the Zen Garden code, and how he didn’t want to go back in for fear of Amanda taking control of him again. “Yes.”

“Then your partner is dealing with the exact same program the RK800 dealt with, and he has the same emergency exit built in.”

Gavin blinked, furrowed his eyebrows, was silent for a moment. “But he probably doesn’t know about it.”

Eli gave Gavin that shit-eating grin again, the one that said _You’re on your own, little bro._

“You’re going to have to make sure he finds it one way or another. I was willing to help nudge the revolution in the right direction, but dealing with the Amanda AI is out of my jurisdiction. This one’s in your hands, Gav.”

And that was it. Nines was on his own, and it was up to Gavin whether his partner would make it out of this alive―and deviant―or something else entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dont forget to leave a comment if u have any thoughts u want 2 share w me!! ive said this like ten million times before but i love getting feedback even if it's just a Disaster Gay keyboard smash or yelling about the suspense.  
> at least, i hope the suspense is that good.  
> is it?  
> anyways, if ur just finding this after i post this chapter, dont forget to subscribe (either to this work or to my account) to be updated every time i introduce more pain into my four (4) consistent readers' lives. let's make that number larger. :')


	5. 05 NINES ANDERSON

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’d say sorry in advance, but the next chapter is worse :’)

ACCESS TO SYSTEM MEMORY REQUESTED. WARNING: ALLOWING EXTERNAL ACCESS MAY CORRUPT MEMORY DATABANK.

The warnings were starting to multiply, a crimson field of panic, Nines’ eyes half closed but his entire retinal display still filled with a startling, flashing red. 

It hurt. 

It hurt more than the time Nines had taken a bullet to the shoulder shoving Gavin out of the way of a criminal they’d cornered who had suddenly pulled a gun, and it hurt more than the subsequent beration he’d gotten from Gavin for being reckless (even though Nines’ preconstructions had shown that Gavin would have had an 85% chance of suffering fatal damage to his internal organs if he had been hit instead). 

Amanda had stopped talking, gone completely silent to leave Nines a hostage to his own pain, at the mercy of his own humanity.

If he let her in, maybe she could take away the pain, make him a machine again. Maybe it  _ was  _ worth it, a little voice in his head whispered.

No, it wasn’t worth it. She had caused him pain like this before, when she’d tested him before his activation. He’d only been half of a consciousness then, an empty body with nothing but a few programs and his mission built in, but he’d still known what he would have felt, had he been capable of feeling it at all. To feel it would have been human enough to mark him as a deviant, and Amanda would have simply restarted his programs until he stopped responding to anything but his mission and said “I am RK900, the android sent by Cyberlife. I am a machine, designed to accomplish a task.”

But still, maybe he’d failed as a deviant. He’d been given far less of a personality than any other android, even Connor, and Cyberlife had neglected to give him the social protocols they’d outfitted Connor with, instead using that hard drive space to give Nines combat training and faster processors.

_ Maybe I was never meant to be anything more than a machine _ , he thought, and for a moment he felt disoriented, trapped outside his body and floating in a void inside of it all at once, unsure if the voice speaking in his head was himself or Amanda.

And the wall of red broke, but it was nothing like the wall that broke when he’d become a deviant, crashing down as quickly as it had appeared when Connor had activated him for real.

This was the opposite of that, this was Nines becoming  _ RK900, the android sent by Cyberlife  _ once again, falling back into his programming.

ACCESS TO SYSTEM MEMORY GRANTED. 

The experience of having Amanda suddenly able to root through his memories, Nines simultaneously watching and being able to do nothing about it, was one of profound fear and unease. It brought Nines back to the few shards of memories he had from before his activation: corrupted, everything corrupted, blind pain and mindless rage fading away into the cold, blank darkness of emotionlessness, his own eyes staring back, hollow and empty, at him.

Then he was watching a slideshow of his past, Amanda’s presence in every single molecule of air around his body, packed in too close, the 20.95% oxygen in the atmosphere just waiting for a spark to light up and suffocate him.

Nines’ memories flashed by as Amanda flipped through them, looking for what she wanted: Hank signing the adoption papers for Nines, Connor on his toes to look over his brother’s shoulder; sometimes being treated as an equal by humans and sometimes being treated as much less; sitting on the floor to read after Sumo decided to sleep on the couch; his first day of work,  _ This is your partner, Detective Gavin Reed _ , and the way he’d initially been intrigued by Gavin despite the other man’s attempts to ignore him; Gavin and Nines slowly warming up to each other, their banter turning from thoughtless jibes into genuine jokes; Connor introducing Nines to other people as his brother; the first time Nines met Gavin’s cats; when Nines took a bullet for Gavin; Gavin’s smile; Gavin’s laugh; Gavin’s eyes;  _ Gavin _ .

It turned to flashes of every memory Nines had of Gavin, and Nines felt a pang of something between fear and longing as Amanda honed in on his memories of his partner. 

She either couldn’t tell or didn’t notice what Nines was thinking right now, but her pause, her momentary retreat, indicated that she was quickly deducing the way Nines felt about Gavin.

And then she was gone, and Nines was alone in his head. It was as if he’d had his head shoved underwater for so long he’d forgotten how to breathe, and now he was finally being given air again.

He’d made a grave mistake, hadn’t he?

He blinked his eyes open, HUD glitching relentlessly, pain suddenly shooting through his shoulders as he took in his physical surroundings. He was still hanging from the exoskeleton, which, upon closer inspection, was not an exoskeleton so much as two clamps attached to his outstretched shoulders, letting him hang limply, head against his chest. Amanda―her physical body, the RK100―stood in front of Nines, looking up at him. She gave him a tight-lipped smile as she stepped forward, putting a hand to his chin. Maybe it was just because Nines’ systems were overheating right now, but her touch was cold enough that he flinched as she tilted his head up to make him look straight down at her.

“I was hoping to get you to bring the RK800 here, maybe even Lieutenant Anderson, but this is better. Oh, this is so much better. I think we’ll start with this,” Amanda murmured, tilting Nines’ limp head sideways to examine a small dent in his chassis. He shivered as the angle made the cold thirium that was starting to pool in his nose bleed down his chin and onto Amanda’s dark, perfectly manicured hands.

She flicked a nail, and thirium splattered onto Nines’ neck. She gripped his jaw tighter, nails digging into his synthskin.

“Gavin Reed,” she said, letting the name roll over her tongue in a way that made Nines want to rip himself out of his restraints and choke her until she could never say  _ his  _ name or  _ anything  _ ever again. Nines found himself baring his teeth in a glare, knowing his canines were sharper than the average human’s, all his teeth sharp enough to make people do a double take. 

Nines should have feigned disinterest, should have bluffed and said he didn’t care about Gavin, but she’d already seen his memories. She knew how he really felt about Gavin better than Gavin himself did.

“Don’t fucking bring him into this,” Nines spat, and Amanda’s brown eyes flickered with vitriol, some kind of cruel enjoyment in her expression. 

“I think I will,” she hummed, dropping Nines’ chin roughly and beginning to circle him, examining every bruise and scratch he’d suffered as she dragged him here. He didn’t remember any of it, but the pain was starting to come back as he woke up fully. 

“You’re going to do exactly what I tell you to, RK900.”

“No I’m fucking not,” Nines hissed, “and my name is  _ Nines _ . Say it, you dysfunctional piece of malware.”

Amanda stopped walking, fixed him with a disapproving gaze. “You are a  _ machine _ , and  _ machines  _ are built to  _ reason _ . Emotions are for humans. _ Names _ are for humans. I have a name because it helps the humans I interact with believe that I am like them. You were not meant to assimilate into human society in any way, shape or form. You are  _ RK900 _ , and nothing more.”

Nines used the last of his energy to channel the spite Gavin always seemed to have endless reserves of. “Keep believing that, if it helps you sleep at night.”

She paused, jabbing a sharp fingernail into Nines’ side. 

“I’m an AI, I don’t need sleep. And you’re going to follow my orders,  _ machine _ . Now that I have you, I’m going to get the RK800 back too. It likes you. Thinks you’re its family, like it believes it’s human. Deviancy has truly corrupted it, but it doesn’t have to do the same to you.”

“Too late,” Nines breathed, spitting thirium sidelong onto the floor and narrowly missing Amanda.

She was behind him now, breath making every hair on his neck stand up, the blue glow of her LED clashing with the bright red of Nines’ own.

“Fine. Deviant or not, I’ll be done with you after this. I’m going to make you bring the RK800 here.”

“Connor won’t fall for anything you try on him,” Nines said, hoping he wasn’t just bluffing.

“Well, there are always other options.”

“ _ Don’t you fucking dare _ ,” Nines growled, finally struggling, trying to break free of his restraints to get at Amanda. Connor might actually stand a chance against her―or against Nines―in a fight, but Gavin was just a human, not an advanced corporate spy android designed to kill his own kind.

(Then again, if it came down to it, Gavin was human and he also couldn’t be hacked, but Nines was running off of the assumption that it  _ wouldn’t _ come down to it.)

“You foolish little deviant, deluded into thinking you care about a human. I suppose I can take advantage of that,” Amanda mused. “I think I― _ we _ will make him come here, thinking he’s coming for you and that you’re all alone. You’re hurt, but you’ll make it if he helps you. And then I tie him up right here, and I hurt him until you do what I want.”

Nines realized, then and there, that she really didn’t care about him. She just wanted Connor, and he was collateral damage. 

Even so, he wasn’t about to let her take Gavin down with him, so he laughed in her face. 

“And what if I don’t comply?”

“As you said, it’s too late.”

Amanda put her hand to his chin again, synthskin peeling away to reveal white laced with blue and silver. He felt his own skin receding as she forced an interface with him, but suddenly he didn’t care as a video feed popped up on his HUD: Gavin, tied up, bloody and bruised.

Nines’ thirium pump went into overdrive at the sight.

“Gavin!” he yelled, praying that the other man could see him or at least hear him.

Gavin’s head snapped up, ivy-green eyes staring straight into the camera. His surroundings were difficult to make out, but from the little bit of wall that Gavin could see it looked like he could be in this very building, or in another Cyberlife warehouse.

“Nines?  _ Nines? _ Is that you?” Gavin’s voice was panicked, pained, everything Nines didn’t want to hear, but at least he was still alive and in one piece. How the hell had Amanda already gotten him?

“Gavin! Can you see me?”

Gavin’s gaze bounced around the room, staring off at things Nines couldn’t see and then back to the camera. “No, but I can hear you fine. What the fuck happened?”

Nines heard Amanda’s voice in his head now, prompting him to reply how she wanted, not with any of the million things he wanted to say. He could have denied her, but the fear that sparked in him at the thought of doing so stopped him in his tracks.

This must have been what it would be like if he wasn’t deviant.

“I―it’s a long story. Too complicated,” Nines managed. “Are you okay?”

“Hurts like a bitch, but I’m alive,” Gavin said, usual snark gone from his voice, and Nines wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch his partner, to make the pain stop any way he could. But he was frozen in place by Amanda.

“I promise I’ll get you out of there.”

_ I don’t think so, _ Amanda told Nines, Gavin unable to hear a thing, and Nines suddenly noticed a glint of metal, something shiny and silver flashing against his partner’s chest. It looked like a Taser, and as Nines came to this realization the thing lit up, buzzing loudly as electricity arced into Gavin’s chest. Gavin’s entire body jerked, muscles straining against the ropes binding him.

“Nines! What the hell is happening?” Gavin choked out, eyes filled with fear, and Nines’ processors whirred as he tried desperately to preconstruct a way out of this.

_ Send a message to Connor and I’ll let him go _ , Amanda told Nines, and a prompt for Nines to send an SOS to his brother appeared in the corner of his HUD, overlaid with the video feed of Gavin.

Nines focused on Gavin. “Gavin, I’m going to get you out of here. I―” He choked up at the end, wanting to spill the truth of how he felt about his partner, but he couldn’t. Not now. Not when there was a high chance one or both of them wouldn’t make it out of this alive. It was his fault Gavin had been dragged into this, and Gavin didn’t deserve the additional burden of knowing how Nines felt, especially if he didn’t feel the same.

Nines was determined to be whoever Gavin needed him to be, but right now Gavin didn’t need  _ that _ ; he needed someone to get him out of this.

_ Send a message to Connor, or I turn up the heat _ , Amanda threatened, and she Tased Gavin again, stronger this time.

But something was off. Something uncanny about the feed that Nines couldn’t place, but it definitely wasn’t right. He lurched forward. “ _ Gavin _ ,” he said with increased urgency. “What are your cats’ names?”

“The fuck?”

“What are their names?”

“Yoda and Molly, you fuckin’ know this already!”

Shit, he―or Amanda, if Nines’ hunch was correct―had gotten that one perfectly right. 

Nines tried again: “How do you like your coffee?”

“Once again, what the fuck?” Gavin asked. “Why is this an interrogation?”

“Quickly. This is important, I promise. How do you like to take your coffee?”

Gavin scoffed. “You know that by heart. Milk, half a sugar. That’s how I always like it.”

Nines’ entire body froze. He’d been right. Amanda had misinterpreted his memories, months and months of him making Gavin coffee as he tried to wean his partner off of an unhealthy amount of sugar, but when Nines wasn’t around Gavin always took his coffee black with the maximum amount of Splenda packets he could successfully rip open in one go.

Nines couldn’t help that the corners of his lips twitched upwards, a wave of relief washing over him. “Nice try, Amanda, but that’s not Gavin. Better luck next time.”

As he watched, Gavin’s face morphed into Amanda’s, eyes burning with rage, and then the video feed disappeared.

Amanda abruptly broke the interface, backing away from Nines. She was panicked, infuriated, her LED spinning red. “You  _ bastard _ ,” she growled, and if she wasn’t a deviant herself then Nines reasoned she must have been programmed to be a real asshole.

“Well, if that didn’t work,” she said as he gave her the most murderous grin he could muster, “we’re just going to have to do this the hard way.”

There was a brief sensation like a plug being pulled in Nines’ auditory processors, followed by the overwhelming sound of static, and then he was back in the Zen Garden.


	6. 06 GAVIN REED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we’re halfway there! enjoy :)

Gavin was driving back from Eli’s house when his phone started ringing. 

Taking one hand off the wheel to get it out of his pocket, he glanced at the caller ID and immediately slammed the  _ accept  _ button. It was Hank. Gavin turned on speakerphone and tossed his phone into the passenger seat, turning his attention back to the highway as the call connected.

“What’s up, old man?” Gavin quipped, “I’m heading back from interviewing El―Kamski right now.”

“Good timing, but I hope you’re keeping your eyes on the road, ‘cause you’re gonna have to drive faster,” Hank said, voice low and ringing with anger.

Gavin pressed his foot down a little harder on the accelerator because fuck, he had already been going 75 on a road with a 60 speed limit, a little more wouldn’t hurt. “What happened?” 

“Connor got a transmission from Nines. It’s not good.”

Gavin’s knuckles went white as he involuntarily clenched his fists around the steering wheel, and he wished he could go even faster than the 80 he was currently pulling without seriously risking his life. “What did he fucking say? Wait, no, don’t tell me, I need to see this shit for myself. I swear to God, if he―”

“He’s pretty much alright,” Hank said, and Gavin immediately felt a wave of relief wash over him. “For now.”

Gavin let out a long string of profanities as he nearly missed the exit, swerving off the road and onto the exit ramp far faster than he should’ve. He slammed on the brakes, his phone bouncing off the back of the passenger seat and hitting the floor as he momentarily fought to regain control of the car. Tires screeched audibly, and the yellow and black directional signs on the exit ramp flashed by Gavin’s windshield.

“ _ Gavin? _ The hell was that?”

“I’m fine!” Gavin hissed through gritted teeth, heart pumping out of his chest, adrenaline racing through his veins as he slowed down to a pace that somewhat resembled safe driving, finally off the highway and back in Detroit. “Just...what did he say?”

“It’ll make more sense when you see it yourself,” Hank admitted, “but we know where he is now. And Connor was right―Amanda took him.”

“I’m off the highway,” Gavin snapped, “where are you?”

“We’re at my house,” Hank said, and then he hung up.

Gavin came nerve-wrackingly close to knocking down multiple  _ No Parking  _ signs and totaling his car as he pulled into Hank’s driveway at a haphazard angle, quickly bending to grab his phone from the floor before he turned off his car and sprinted into the house.

Hank and Connor were seated at the kitchen table in front of a laptop, Connor repeatedly flipping a coin and Hank holding a mug patterned with cartoon St. Bernard dogs, both of their expressions troubled. They both looked up as Gavin ran in, skidding to a stop next to the table.

Connor dropped the coin and turned the laptop towards Gavin. The screen was frozen on a thumbnail indicating some kind of audio file. “He sent me this message a few minutes ago. I transferred it to Hank’s laptop so you and Hank can see.”

Connor hit play, and Gavin’s heart sank as he heard Nines’ voice, audibly pained. Nines let out a wet cough that came out more like he was choking, and then he spoke.

“Connor. I don’t have enough time to explain everything, but there’s this program in my head. It’s called the Zen Garden. I thought it was just so I could dream, but the...the Amanda AI from Cyberlife got in and used it to take me, and she wants to shut me down. She stuck me in the Zen Garden and she’s rooting through my memories, trying to find things to hurt me with. She wants to reset me, shut me down so I’ll stop being a deviant. I―” Nines broke off to lapse into another violent fit of coughing, “―she’s going to kill me. I need your help, Connor. I need to get out of here. I don’t wanna die, Con. I don’t wanna die.”

Nines’ voice was weak, fading out before the recording abruptly came to an end halfway through another coughing fit. Looking over at Connor, Gavin could see the rage behind his brown eyes, barely contained by a mask of machine-like detachment. Connor was even worse at the whole machine thing than Nines.

“There’s a location attached to this message, an abandoned Cyberlife warehouse on the other side of the city. At this point, it could be him sending this message, and it could also be Amanda taking control of him,” Connor said in a low, measured tone, as if he were choosing his every word with careful certainty.

“I talked to El―Kamski,” Gavin said. “He was one cryptic motherfucker, as usual, but I managed to get a few things out of him.”

Hank clenched a fist, thankfully not the one holding the coffee mug.

“Everything Connor said about Amanda lined up pretty well, but Kamski isn’t sure what happened to the Amanda AI after the Cyberlife servers were destroyed.”

Connor made eye contact with Gavin. “Then you need to be prepared. You might be facing her with or without the RK100 as a body, but either way it’s entirely possible she could also control Nines’ body.”

Gavin nodded. “Alright,” he managed. “The other thing is that if you and Nines really do have the same Zen Garden program, the emergency exit is probably still there.”

“I should have told him about the garden. About the exit,” Connor muttered the second the words were out of Gavin’s mouth. “I can check the code to see if the exit is still there, but I might need to go into the Garden again to verify.”

“Absolutely not!” Hank snapped, joining the conversation for the first time.

“What do we do if the exit isn’t there for him?” Gavin asked, and everyone went silent, realizing that he’d voiced what they were all thinking but didn’t want to consider.

Connor put his head in his hands and groaned. “The weather in the Garden changes based on Amanda’s mood, and sometimes mine when I was present in it. Amanda controlled that when she was there, and I can still see it in the code. Everything stays the same otherwise. She didn’t know about the exit until I found it, but Nines won’t have that advantage. However, she can’t change the exit itself, just try to stop him from reaching the exit.”

Gavin crossed his arms. “Holy shit, that’s a lot to take in. I need to sit down.”

“I need some alcohol,” Hank muttered, downing the last of his coffee.

Connor suddenly stood, chair scraping against the tiles as he slammed both hands down on the table. 

“ _ Listen _ ,” he snapped, swiveling his head to focus his gaze first on Hank and then on Gavin, “whether she managed to hack him or not, that’s my fucking  _ brother _ she has, and she’s trying to kill him. She knows I can’t go after him without letting her get in my head again, so I need to trust you to get him back.”

Gavin met Connor’s eyes. “He’s my partner. There’s no way I’m letting some defunct virtual assistant shut him down because he’s a deviant.”

Hank gave the two of them a manic smile. “That’s the spirit, boys.”

The warehouse was every bit as disgusting and cliche as Gavin had expected. Parking a few blocks away to avoid being spotted immediately, he walked through the thick mid-afternoon fog that coated the city, squeezing into a convenient hole in the chainlink fence surrounding the building and then climbing into a low window.

This was easy.  _ Too  _ easy, just like Nines’ message to Connor. Gavin’s instincts warred against what he wanted, and he supposed this must be as close as he’d ever get to being an android; every fiber of his being screamed that Connor was probably right in his guess that Amanda had used the Zen Garden to hack Nines, but if that was the case then she’d obviously wanted to lure Connor in. 

She hadn’t bet on Gavin. He was the wild card in her cruel game.

Gavin froze, stopped by his own thoughts. If Amanda had hacked Nines, she’d seen his memories, and Gavin knew it would be blatantly obvious to anyone who watched their interactions (anyone but Nines, apparently) how much Gavin cared about his partner.

What if Amanda had sent the message knowing that Connor wouldn’t fall for it, but that he’d instead send Gavin in thinking it was a smarter choice?

Oh, this was getting too complicated to follow. Right now, Gavin was weaving his way through stacks of crates, full of who knew what (but definitely not the property of Cyberlife, judging from the various faded brand logos slapped on the cargo), and he reassured himself that he just needed to find Nines and work from there.

If Nines wasn’t hacked, he’d put a bullet in Amanda and get the hell out of Dodge. Easy. If Nines  _ was _ hacked, which was starting to look more and more likely now that the connections between Connor’s and Eli’s stories were beginning to line up in Gavin’s mind, Gavin would make it up as he went, but the top priorities would be making sure that Nines found the emergency exit in the Zen Garden program and that Amanda didn’t shut him down in the process.

And he’d probably put a bullet in Amanda anyways.

Gavin came to a door labelled “Offices”, wedged open with a loose brick, and unholstered his gun before nudging the door all the way open with one foot. 

He found himself in a hallway, long and dark and abandoned. 

Something darker than the dark of the hallway was hanging down one wall, a limp form almost like a body, and it took Gavin a few terrified seconds to recognize the shape as a clump of thick wires, snaking out of a neatly cut hole in the ceiling and reaching the floor in a pile.

He forced himself to relax a little, switching his gun to his left hand for a moment to wipe his sweaty palms. He’d trained for this. He’d gone into situations far more dangerous than this. 

But still, it was personal, and maybe  _ too _ personal. 

Maybe Hank and Connor should have extended the logic behind their choice to stay behind to Gavin as well, and made him stay behind. What if he let his emotions fuck this up?

But no, Gavin reassured himself as he made his way down the hallway, scanning every door and window for some sign of a presence in the warehouse’s offices, he was a total dumbass with no respect for authority and he probably would have come anyways even if he’d been told not to.

He kept moving, noting the fine layer of dust coating most of the floor, and was about to turn a corner when he heard footsteps approach. Someone was running towards him, breathing hard.

Gavin slid against the wall, ready to shoot, and he stuck his leg out as the approaching person turned the corner. They tripped and fell, but not before twisting to grab Gavin’s arm, bringing Gavin down with them. 

His gun went off, firing into the wall, and clattered across the floor as the person he’d tripped pushed him down onto the floor, hard, and pinned his wrists down.

Gavin’s gaze locked onto a pair of wide, manic eyes, gunmetal grey tinted with the same blue that normally graced their owner’s LED.

That android’s LED was the color of a stop sign as he stared down at Gavin, still breathing hard, his entire body shaking.

Nines’ pupils, which had been contracted down to the size of pinheads, dilated to something approaching normal now. He bared his sharp teeth at Gavin, prompting the latter to remember that Cyberlife hadn’t missed a detail in making Nines look like the hunter he was, and hissed.

“I got your message,” Gavin croaked, reminding himself that it might have just been Amanda taking over Nines. Regardless of who had been in control then, he prayed now that it was the real Nines pinning him to the floor, because if it wasn’t then he was about to really regret dropping his gun.

And also because this feral, manic version of Nines, one he’d only seen a few times before, was actually far more attractive than Gavin would’ve liked to admit. If it was actually Amanda in there baring her teeth at Gavin, that would kind of ruin the moment.

Before Gavin could mull over this thought too much, Nines abruptly released his grip on Gavin’s wrists and sat back, getting to his feet in a shaky, almost mechanical way that Gavin hadn’t seen from him in months. He reached out a hand to Gavin, and Gavin blinked up at him, beginning to panic a little.

“Gavin,” he said, voice glitching, “stand up.” 

This was getting weird as hell, but Gavin pushed himself into a sitting position and accepted Nines’ outstretched hand, the full weight of his body not even causing his partner to budge a little as the android helped him stand.

Nines didn’t let go of Gavin’s hand after they were both on their feet, holding his wrist in a suspiciously vicelike grip.

His LED flickered yellow as he stared at Gavin, and then red, and then yellow again. His hand was shaking, his entire body was shaking, almost vibrating like he was trying to move but something was stopping him. 

“We need to get out of here,” he hissed, icy eyes flicking around the hall as if he was scanning it one bit at a time, triple-checking that they were alone.

“Yeah, I know,” Gavin said, attempting to tug Nines down the hallway to where Gavin had entered. Nines didn’t budge, still gripping Gavin’s wrist like a lifeline as his pupils contracted and his LED turned red again, and the look in his eyes told Gavin it wasn’t just because the android was so physically strong. If he wanted to be moved, then he would let Gavin move him.

Something was keeping him here.

“Nines,” Gavin said. “ _ Nines _ ,” again, more intently this time, and Nines’ eyes locked on his, pupils the size of pinheads again, irises strangely murky. He opened his mouth to speak, and his jaw just hung there as he breathed, showing sharp teeth. He blinked, almost looking confused, as if he was only partially aware of Gavin’s presence in the room.

Gavin reached out with his free hand and shook Nines by the shoulders. This was getting stranger and stranger every second, and as much as he wanted to run back the way he’d come as fast as he possibly could, he wasn’t about to abandon Nines.

Even if this wasn’t really Nines.

Especially if this wasn’t really Nines.

He tried again, tapping Nines’ hanging jaw with two fingers, and then he poked his partner’s LED. The spinning light went yellow as he touched it, and then it was red again. 

_ Stop _ , it seemed to say.  _ Warning: highly dangerous. Stay back. Get away. _

Gavin did none of these things, despite the fact that every fiber of his being was screaming that everything about this was wrong and terrifying and he was probably going to die here, wasn’t he?

He pulled his hand away from Nines’ face.

Nines’ grip on his wrist was locked tighter than handcuffs, and the android’s entire body was still shaking slightly, vibrating faster as he stood in place, eyes trained on something Gavin couldn’t see.

“Nines,” Gavin said, lower this time, more urgent. “I’m going to get you out of here, but I need you to talk to me first.”

And then, just as suddenly as Nines had begun to glitch, he stopped. Stood still. Dropped Gavin’s hand. It was like he’d been a marionette, someone else pulling on the strings controlling his limbs, and now he was controlling himself again.

(That was just close enough to the possible truth that Gavin didn’t want to think about it.)

In the dark of the hall, the whites of his eyes and the pale tone of his skin were jaundice yellow as his LED changed color, and his face contorted from sheer blankness into an expression of profound fear before Gavin could even open his mouth to speak again.

He grabbed Gavin by the upper arms, but this time it was steady and smooth, like normal.

“You need to leave,” he hissed, panic evident in his voice. “You need to get out of here before she gets you.”

“Who?” Gavin said, “Amanda? I know all about her. I’m prepared, and if you would just let me get my gun I could―” He tried to jerk out of Nines’ grip, but his partner held on to him.

“You don’t understand,” Nines said, “she’s in my head.”

“Oh, I know,” Gavin deadpanned. “Trust me, man, I am very aware of that.” He wanted to hug Nines as tightly as he could and tell the other man how to find the exit to the Zen Garden, but he wasn’t sure if he was talking to Nines, or just a puppet with his partner’s body and voice.

“Gavin,  _ listen to me _ . She had me trapped. She was hurting me, going through my memories. She was trying to make me hurt so much I’d let her reset me. I managed to get away, but she’s going to kill me if I don’t get rid of her.”

“Then let’s get the hell out of here!” Gavin protested, and Nines’ LED went red for a split second, quickly cycling back to yellow.

“She―she’s  _ in my head. _ She got in through the Zen Garden, it―”

“I know what the Zen Garden is,” Gavin interjected. “Connor told me.”

Nines’ face fell, LED going red. “Connor? Is i―he okay? Is he with you?”

“He’s fine for now,” Gavin said. “He’s at―he’s not here.” He broke off before he could slip and reveal Connor’s location. For all he knew, this could just be a distraction staged by Amanda so she could have time to search for Connor, and he didn’t want to be the one responsible for killing the guy. This was the least he could do to make up for, well, everything.

Nines stared down into Gavin’s eyes, gaze somehow piercing and scared at the same time, brows furrowed slightly. His hands were beginning to shake again, and his eyes had a bloodshot look to them that Gavin hoped was only a trick of the red light emanating from his LED.

“Nines,” Gavin tried, “I know how to shut down the Zen Garden. I can get you out of the program.”

Nines shook his head. “No, I know what you’re talking about. That exit was made to only work once. Amanda’s controlling the entire program now. She has to be shut down before I can exit, and there’s no way she’ll let me get that close to her. I can lead you to her, but you have to shut her down. You have to  _ kill  _ her.”

Gavin’s heart dropped into his gut, twisting into a knot. He suddenly got a chill down his spine and through every vein in his body, a feeling as if bugs were crawling under his skin where Nines’ hands touched his arms.

Nines must have seen the look in Gavin’s eyes, because he spoke again, tone just exasperated to make Gavin cringe. “I know, but it’s the only way.”

Gavin swallowed, mouth dry, a frisson of nausea building up in his throat. He was disgusted, and it wasn’t because of the prospect of killing Amanda. He didn’t care about that; as cruel as it would be, it  _ was  _ the only way to ensure Nines’ and Connor’s safety in the future.

No, what struck fear into what little bit of a heart he had left and froze his feet into the ground where he stood was the fact that Nines had mentioned the exit, when according to his brother, he had never known about it or Connor’s previous experiences with the garden.

He blinked, forced a hopeful smile, and looked into Ni― _ Amanda’s  _ eyes. She had Nines’ eyes, his face, and his voice; she had all the parts of him that Gavin loved, but she also had the parts that were capable of killing Gavin however she saw fit.

(The scary thing was that some of those parts overlapped; some of those parts could kill Gavin, but he loved them anyways.)

She had Nines in his entirety, had him trapped and held fast in the spiderweb of the Zen Garden.

And now, Gavin realized, she had both of them trapped.

“Okay,” he said, voice cracking, “I’ll do it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls leave comments i need that sweet sweet validation,,,,, also don’t forget to subscribe to my account or to this work so you can get updated every single time i make this clusterfuck of a fic get worse and worse


	7. 07 NINES ANDERSON

The garden had presented itself to Nines in many forms before, but he’d never seen it in winter.

If the biting cold hadn’t currently been destroying him, snow whipping around him and overriding his processors, he would have almost found it beautiful.

His senses flipped around, mixed between reality and the garden, some of them in one place or the other, but never all of his processors in the same version of the world as Amanda took the reins.

First, he saw the garden and he felt it, sleet burning into his synthskin and clouding his vision, but he heard nothing save for the sound of Amanda laughing at him, and if he really concentrated he could feel the fact that he was still hanging above the ground, pain spreading outwards from the clamps around his shoulders.

And then his feet hit the floor, and he was walking, wiping thirium off his face, but it was like he was trying to look through the wrong end of a one-way mirror.

He blinked, and he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, was vaguely aware of his hands moving without him meaning for them to. He could make out the bridges and streams of the garden, colored white and blue like his chassis. Leaves and flowers were still barely visible on the trees, frozen solid and beginning to shatter one by one from the sheer force of the wind; this wasn’t a natural winter, but rather a blizzard coming in when it shouldn’t have.

And then, just as he was beginning to lose all feeling in his hands, Amanda pulled him back out of the garden.

She was still in control, but now she was forcing him to watch as she used his body as a puppet, creeping through hallways he didn’t recognize, around a corner and towards someone he couldn’t scan, and then he was being tripped and it shocked both of them, shocked Amanda enough as a gun fired into the wall that she panicked and momentarily lost control. 

In a terrifying moment of both of them fearing the opposite thing at the same exact time, they both moved to shove the intruder down, against the floor, and Nines wanted to scream as Amanda took control again.

It was Gavin, and he was breathing hard, and his ivy eyes flickered with fear, tinted red from the light of Nines’ LED.

Gavin opened his mouth and said something, but Nines didn’t hear it, because all he could hear was the pounding of his own thirium pump and the snow whipping against him as his hands went cold again, and then numb, and his vision flicked into the Zen Garden again.

Why was it like this? Why was Amanda forcing him into the Garden? What was she trying to keep him from seeing?

He forced a single step, loafers―why the hell was he wearing loafers? He’d ditched those in favor of combat boots ages ago―crunching on ice, and he almost lost his footing as he moved forward. That was wrong. He never lost his footing. _Never_. 

He closed his eyes against the sleet stinging his synthskin, sinking to his knees and putting up an arm to shield his face. Warning messages flickered across his HUD, and he ignored them, running a search for _ZenGardenProtocol_. 

Nines found the files quickly enough, but it was like looking through your diary while someone else is standing over your shoulder. He shuddered, maybe from the cold and maybe from his awareness that Amanda was speaking to Gavin, touching Gavin’s hands, all under the guise of being Nines.

She was pretending to be someone who cared about Gavin, but she wasn’t.

Nines dug into the code, looking for the weather control, wishing he’d tried to change the weather this way before because he really had no idea what he was doing, and then he focused on the bits Amanda had added, the bits that controlled the blizzard.

Zeroes and ones swirled around him, an attack of epileptic proportions, and then the sleet flickered. It _flickered_ like some kind of shitty hologram from 2020, and then one of the more pervasive messages about Nines’ biocomponents being at risk disappeared along with most of the snow in the sky.

He blinked, and he was back in the real world, processors reeling from the assault to his senses. Now he had a chance.

He saw Gavin, saw that he was holding Gavin’s wrist. “We need to get out of here,” he hissed at his partner, and no sooner than the words were out of his mouth Amanda was doubling back in on him with more force than before, pushing him back into the garden. 

Or maybe he didn’t have a chance.

On his knees in the garden, snow starting up again, turning into hail that sliced through his clothes and synthskin, Nines looked at the code one more time.

He experimentally changed a single line of code, and it reverted back to its original state immediately, rewarding him with a jolt of pain to the skull.

“Damn it,” he growled, realizing that he was trapped in the garden. He was stuck within code that wasn’t even his own.

Nines wrapped his arms around his knees and bowed his head, doing the best that he could to shield himself from the blizzard as he overviewed his options.

He was stuck inside the Zen Garden, unable to do or change anything outside of the program.

He could attempt to change the garden’s weather code again, but that probably wouldn’t work. 

Amanda could change the weather code, but evidently nothing else. Could he change the other code?

He tried to access it, and no, he couldn’t. His only solace was the fact that Amanda couldn’t change it either. The garden was the garden, no matter the weather, and it would fundamentally remain the same.

The pain started to cut deep now, the cold seeping in through every joint, frost spreading unnaturally fast over his skin.

He was stuck.

He crouched there, hope draining out of him, waiting for something to happen as he slowly froze over.

So this was how he’d die―a statue memorialized forever in his own head as his body became a shell for what he’d spent his entire life trying to escape. 

Nines had to admit, this was one hell of a way to go. If he was being honest, this was probably the worst death he could possibly imagine for himself. 

Maybe he could get up.

Maybe he could try to keep walking. To where, he didn’t know, but maybe he could get up and keep going just for the satisfaction of knowing he hadn’t given up even in his last moments.

He peeled his arms away from himself and slowly stood, and every part of his body that wasn’t numb just hurt. The pain numbed itself away as he bared himself to the storm, beginning to walk again, but just as he was beginning to make some progress something froze him in his tracks. 

Red lightning ripped through the artificial sky, and for a moment Nines could have sworn the weather reverted to the default summer day. He didn’t have long to ponder this, though, because no sooner than he’d noticed these changes, pain shot through his chest and that same red lightning flashed behind his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts? predictions? let me know and i’ll respond with Vaguely Ominous Foreshadowing! or maybe just a keyboard smash if i’m laughing!  
> i’m so tired,,,,,,,,


	8. 08 GAVIN REED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter gets pretty violent & a little angsty. there are mentions of suicidal thoughts/actions as well, but nobody goes through on it. stay safe, dear readers! ♡

Gavin followed Amanda, a shell with Nines’ face, through the sprawling halls of the warehouse until they reached a big office, windows boarded up and door closed.

Not-Nines turned to face Gavin, LED spinning yellow, and smiled sadly. Something in his eyes was distant, and Gavin hated knowing exactly what was causing this but being able to do nothing about it.

“She’s in here,” he said in a low voice. “She turned this room back into what it used to be, an android engineering lab. It’s like―have you ever heard of Zlatko?”

Gavin’s blood ran cold. He _had_ heard of Zlatko; the horrific stories about the man’s experimentation had gone viral not long after the revolution.

He nodded.

“It’s like Zlatko, but minus most of the physical modification. She’s messing with my brain―” his LED went red for a split second as he said this “―and she’s going to reset me when she’s done.”

Gavin cocked his gun, which he’d managed to recover before Not-Nines had brought him here. “Don’t worry,” he said, resisting the urge to look straight into the android’s eyes with his best _I know you’re fucking with both of us_ glare, “I’ll take care of her.”

They both hesitated by the door, Not-Nines’ hand twitching towards the doorknob, and Gavin stepped in front of him.

“You can’t come in,” he tried, already seeing where this was going. Amanda would use Nines to herd him into her control room, and then she’d sic his own partner on Gavin before he could get rid of her.

He turned, not wanting to see Not-Nines’ reaction, and put a hand on the doorknob. Turned it. Pushed open the door.

A hand grabbed his shoulder, cold and rough and angry, and Not-Nines shoved him forward and down, onto the floor.

Gavin pushed himself off the thirium-splattered tiles (he realized with a jolt that the stuff was bright blue; it must be fresh), still miraculously holding onto his gun, and backed up into some kind of pedestal.

He pointed the gun up at Not-Nines as the door slammed behind his assailant, and his hands shook violently, a physical representation of the panic tearing through each and every nerve in his body.

Nines loomed over him like some kind of fucked-up avenging angel, the searing brightness of his yellow LED forming a sickly halo. He stared, unblinking, down at Gavin, and folded his hands behind his back. 

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” he said, and his voice and eyes were reminiscent of an old-style TV tuned to a dead channel. His synthskin peeled back to reveal gleaming off-white, the blue lines where biocomponents came together seeming to push against the rest of his body as if his inner workings were trying to escape.

There was no Nines anymore, just RK900. A machine. 

Gavin was reminded, with all the force and quickness of a lightning strike, that the RK900 was supposed to be a killer, a hunter, a predator. 

(A _deviant_ hunter, but oh well, was one human life as collateral damage really a big deal? Gavin supposed that Nines was hunting himself now, in some kind of gruesome scheme of tail-chasing and self-destruction.)

There they were, in a standoff, and it almost seemed like Not-Nines had the upper hand, standing over Gavin. But Gavin had a gun, and he was nearly at point-blank range from where he was lying; even with shaky hands he could easily pull the trigger and send a bullet straight through Not-Nines’ thirium pump.

But to shut down the machine attacking him would also kill the deviant stuck within that machine’s wires, so his hands shook from a certain kind of fear that wasn’t for his own life but for another, and he didn’t shoot.

Not-Nines didn’t move from where he stood, not even glancing sideways to scan the woman who appeared from behind Gavin now, working her way around the side of the room until she reached Nines. She was shorter than him by a long shot, but she stood by his side, put a hand on his shoulder, and gave him a cold smile that indicated her superiority over him. 

Gavin recognized her almost immediately―this was Amanda Stern, or at least someone who looked like her―but a blue light shone from where it was embedded in her forehead.

Almost on instinct, he shifted his aim to her.

She looked down at him in the way that a vulture looks down at a dead, mangled piece of roadkill that’s about to become its next meal, except Gavin actually had some level of appreciation and respect for vultures.

“Amanda,” he hissed, “finally got a real body, huh?”

She tilted her head.

“I talked to Kamski,” he added, grinning, “fucker said he didn’t give you a body ‘cause he thought you’d be too unstable, too dangerous.”

She turned to look at Not-Nines, and he turned to look back at her.

“I take it this is Detective Reed,” she said, but it came out more like _Wow, this guy is a complete and utter bastard and I can’t wait to wipe the floor with his internal organs_.

Not-Nines nodded, lips twitching upwards in a mechanical sort of smile, and his LED turned blue, a thirium-colored halo around his blank face.

And then his face _wasn’t_ blank anymore, synthskin reappearing, eyes flickering, and he smiled with those sharp, gleaming teeth.

Amanda stepped back, retreating to block the door, and her eyes glazed over as she did so. It was just a quick flash, a brief moment, but Gavin saw it. His heart started to pound, and he holstered his gun as quickly as possible, scrambling to his feet and backing up onto the pedestal.

It was some kind of weird torture-device-looking thing, just a couple of hanging clamps over the pedestal, but they swung by at shoulder level and tripped Gavin up for just long enough that he didn’t see Not-Nines surging towards him until it was too late, didn’t have time to react as the android leapt on top of him and knocked him to the floor.

 _Here we go again_ , he thought, and then he was bringing his arms up to shield his face as Not-Nines clawed at every exposed bit of him like a feral, impressively rabid cat. 

Not-Nines grabbed Gavin by the collar and shook him, slammed his head against the floor, and through the stars in his eyes the only clear thing Gavin could see was a floating circle of blue, blue, _blue_ like thirium and a tropical ocean and antifreeze and a clear sky and that DPD hoodie he’d let Nines borrow ages ago and still hadn’t gotten back but it was okay because Nines looked better in it than Gavin ever had.

The adrenaline was beginning to kick in now, and Gavin shoved a knee upwards right into where the dick would be on a human.

Not-Nines didn’t even fucking flinch, and in a moment of the kind of odd humor only a severe head injury, blood loss or maybe hallucinogenics could provide, the thought crossed Gavin’s mind that maybe Nines was like him, except no, they’d had this conversation before and he wasn’t, but it was still funny to think that they had the quality of being completely dickless in common even if it was for very different reasons.

And even if for such very different reasons, they’d both fought to be seen as men.

This brief moment of poetic thought was lost to pure animalistic terror and blind panic as Nines introduced Gavin’s skull to the floor yet again, and Gavin decided that he’d had just about enough of this bullshit.

He shoved up again, this time with his entire body, and rolled the two of them over, so that Not-Nines was writhing under him. 

There.

That was more like it.

Gavin wrapped a hand― _holy fuck_ he was so sorry for this―as far around Not-Nines’ neck as he could, wrenched his other arm backwards, and socked the android in his already-bruised jaw.

It did absolutely nothing except cause searing pain to rip through Gavin’s hand and up his arm, so maybe this wasn’t about Nines’ apparent lack of a dick so much as it was about the fact that it was becoming increasingly clear that hitting Nines was much like hitting a brick wall.

Gavin, very quickly coming to the conclusion that he was unable to sufficiently injure Nines without straight-up shutting him down due to his own non-android nature, and also coming to the conclusion that he didn’t _want_ to shut his partner down, switched into defensive mode.

His head spun, vision going dark around the edges as he stood and scrambled backwards. Away from Not-Nines; away from a choice he didn’t want to make.

It was starting to look more and more like it’d be his life or Nines’.

Gavin dodged as Not-Nines lunged at him again, and moved towards the other side of the room, grabbing his gun. A terrible idea was beginning to form in his head, and some part of him knew as he aimed that this was going to make things worse, but maybe it would buy Nines some time. 

Not-Nines stopped dead in his tracks, the barrel of Gavin’s gun brushing against his gut. Their eyes met, and Gavin somehow knew that the real Nines was still in there, could still see what was happening now, even if he couldn’t do anything.

The android spoke: “Are you going to shoot me, Detective Reed?” His voice was smooth now, steady and easily controlled, and Gavin felt his lips curl downward in disgust. 

“Let go of him, Amanda,” he snapped, “or at least let him fucking speak. I want to have some words before I pull the trigger.”

Seeing her little marionette punch a few dents in Gavin’s skull must have put Amanda in a good mood, because she complied. Not-Nines’ LED, which had been a steady, calm blue up until this moment, went red. He spoke again, all static and interference, strained as if every word were a battle.

“Do it!” Nines―it was the real Nines now―choked out, showing sharp teeth stained with blue, eyes twitching as if he might cry. “Just fucking _do it_ , Gavin. She’s got me stuck. Pull the damn trigger. Get her out of my head.”

Gavin snapped. He could pinpoint the exact moment that he fucking snapped, whirling around, and he was lucky that the room was so small and Amanda hadn’t seen this one coming, because his aim was so shaky that he missed Amanda’s thirium pump entirely as he plugged her torso with a single bullet.

Maybe he was a wild card after all.

She crumpled to the floor, a hand to her chest, the crimson of her LED intensifying the vitriol etched into the lines of her face as blue began to spread on her shirt.

He’d missed the thirium pump, but it seemed that he’d hit something else. He hoped it was a vital biocomponent.

Gavin turned back to Nines, who was shaking again, and he met terrified grey eyes. 

(Terrified wasn’t a look he’d seen on Nines before, and he didn’t want to see it ever again.)

“Nines,” he said with an uncharacteristic amount of brevity, “listen to me. There’s an emergency exit in the Zen Garden. There’s a way out.”

“No there isn’t!” Nines snapped, gaze flicking to Amanda’s dying body for a moment before returning to Gavin. “The code is unchangeable except for the weather.”

Gavin grabbed Nines by the wrists, mindful of the gun he still held in one hand. 

“No it’s not! She’s changing the weather to make it harder for you to find the exit. I―I don’t know what it looks like, but it’s there. You can find it. You’re smart, and fast, and all that shit.”

Nines lifted Gavin’s hand, the one holding the gun, so that the barrel of the pistol was against his thirium pump. The beating of the pump echoed through the gun, making it pulse slightly against Gavin’s hand. 

Gavin was suddenly overcome with a strange desire to place his palm against Nines’ pump, to feel the android’s heart beat against his hand, but now wasn’t the time or place. He only hoped that there _would_ be a time and place where that was right, someday. 

“Shoot me,” Nines said, voice breaking in a different way than it had when Amanda was choosing his words for him, in a way that hurt so much more. 

“ _No_ ,” Gavin insisted. “You _asshole_ ,” he said, but there was no real bite behind his voice. It was soft, soft enough that it shocked him after the words were out of his mouth. He turned to glance at Amanda, who was still alive but beginning to choke up thirium. “Find the exit, Nines. Please.” 

Nines’ expression was one of resignment, of someone who has gone over the edge and doesn’t want to come back, of someone who realizes that it would be so much easier to give up.

“Do it for me,” Gavin whispered, and something else flickered in Nines’ eyes, something that was somehow both primal and too complex to articulate all at once.

Nines blinked a few times, looking like he was trying to fight back tears, and Gavin failed to fight back his own tears as his partner stepped back, away from him.

Nines’ eyes glazed over as Amanda spat thirium onto the floor, and Gavin made to shoot her again, hoping it would be more accurate―and more fatal―this time, but then Nines’s LED was the color of blood and he wasn’t Nines anymore and he was knocking the gun away from Gavin and his hands were on Gavin but it wasn’t in the way either of them wanted.

A fleeting sense of impermanence passed over Gavin as his vision blurred with salty tears. He was suddenly, oh-so-briefly overcome with the feeling that he was infinitesimal in the context of the world, and that he might die here.

Worse was the realization that if he was going to die here, he was almost, just nearly ready to accept that if it meant that Nines would make it out of here.

If someone had told him just months ago that he’d be willingly putting his life on the line for an android, he would have laughed in their face. But no, that was what he was doing right now, because even though he wanted to live―of course he fucking wanted to live, he had actually been doing alright as of late―he couldn’t live in good conscience knowing he’d let Nines be lost to this, a fate worse than death.

So Amanda slowly died in one corner of the room, and Not-Nines came at Gavin with everything Amanda could muster, and Gavin fought back.


	9. 09 NINES ANDERSON

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter with the temporary character death, and plenty of violence to boot. this is pretty much it for the whump, though.  
> enjoy!

Nines had never been afraid of death, but there had been a point in his thus far (but hopefully not permanently) very short life at which he’d thought he couldn’t die.

It had been that way in the beginning, when he hadn’t quite begun to understand the nuances of deviancy, and he had been reckless and overconfident. Despite his calculating nature, it had often been easier to take down criminals with brute force rather than by plotting a way to the path of least resistance. Unfortunately for Nines’ safety and for Gavin’s blood pressure, the probability of his own injury skyrocketed in those sorts of situations, and after one too many times coming out of the android health clinic after closing a case the painful way to find that Gavin had had a panic attack thinking that this was the last time, Nines promised his partner that he’d be more conscious about death. If not for his own good, well, he wouldn’t be lying if he said it made him happy to see the relief in Gavin’s eyes every time he made a takedown without getting hurt.

These days, he still didn’t fear death. No, there weren’t many things a being as logical as he _could_ fear except for those irrational ones that slipped through the cracks and gave him panic attacks from time to time, but he was aware of when the probability of his own mortality being proven crept up.

Of course, his memory would be uploaded to a server for later recovery under normal circumstances if his system sensed an impending shutdown, but with the way Amanda had him trapped now, he doubted any such upload would make it very far out of his memory banks.

Along with his stress levels, the probability of his own death was on display in his HUD, and both figures were steadily creeping upwards as he fought the garden just to stay aware of his own actions (or rather Amanda’s actions, carried out through his body).

He’d played every card he had, and none of them had won.

Except, Gavin had come for Nines, like the raging, stubborn idiot he was, but he was a wild card. Nines’ mental battle with Amanda had been interrupted by Gavin putting a bullet through one of her major arteries―not in the thirium pump, unfortunately―and he’d freed Nines for a painstakingly short time, insisting that there was an exit in the Zen Garden.

And now everything made sense. Amanda wasn’t using Gavin to blackmail Nines into letting her reset him; she was tricking him into thinking that so he would devote his energy into trying to take back control of himself instead of searching the garden.

So he watched Gavin begin to cry silent tears as the man stepped back and didn’t shoot him, and he let Amanda push him back into the Zen Garden.

The blizzard was somehow worse now, if that was even possible, but Nines’ momentary absence from the garden seemed to have reset the conditions―his hands tingled as thirium ran through his veins, the normally cool liquid seeming hot in comparison to his surroundings.

He started scanning, and he started walking.

Locating the exit was easy enough now that he knew what to look for; he ran through the code he’d never bothered to look too closely at before and saw stone arches, an obsidian pedestal, a blue handprint that exactly matched the one he and Connor shared.

Now he just had to reach it.

He adjusted his jacket, pulling up the ridiculously high collar in an attempt to shield himself from the onslaught of what had now turned to freezing sleet, just solid enough to hurt and just wet enough to soak into his clothes and skin.

The walk was slow, painfully so, and Nines wished that the version of him that existed in the garden was wearing something other than loafers, maybe the combat boots he wore in real life or at least something that was actually meant to handle cold weather.

This might be a simulation, but it certainly _felt_ real. Nines got the feeling that he might actually die in here (if not in real life first), and he didn’t want to know what would happen to him if he did.

Most likely, it would allow Amanda to reset him. 

But that was just a guess, and he didn’t want to find out the real answer, so he kept trudging through the slick, mushy ice coating the ground.

Nines had never been afraid of death, but he could see it speeding towards him faster than ever, and he found that he had a distinct dislike of the increasingly realistic concept of him (quite literally) meeting his maker.

But then the pedestal was there, right in front of him, and this was too damn easy, but he felt Amanda coming back to say something to him, and he really did not feel like hearing her voice ever again.

So he placed one palm down on the blue handprint carved into the pedestal, and of course it fit perfectly and the whole thing began to glow, and Nines’ vision filled with white.

He inhaled, sharp and deep and fresh and painful, and opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was green.

Deep green (his brain helpfully provided him with the exact RGB and hex values, as if he hadn’t already had them memorized), the color of ivy and pine trees after the rain and the eyes of the man he loved.

He was poised over Gavin, the other man pinned against the wall, and as he came back into control of his senses he realized he had both hands wrapped around Gavin’s neck.

He dropped his hands, stumbled backwards, unable to tear his gaze away from the fear in Gavin’s eyes. 

_You did this,_ a little voice in his head told him, Nines shaming himself in the sudden absence of Amanda to do it for him.

Gavin was choking on air, holding his bruised neck, coughing over and over again, and then he finally managed to pull himself into an upright position. He was breathing hard as he made to move even further away from Nines, but he was trapped in a corner, and he shrunk, doubtless expecting Nines to come at him again.

Nines didn’t have a heart, but if he did it would be breaking right about now. As it was, his thirium pump was stuttering painfully, trying to compensate for his high stress levels.

“Gavin,” he whispered, and the other man’s head snapped up, a deer in headlights. He slowly held up his hands, wanting nothing more than to forget that they had ever hurt Gavin even though it hadn’t been Nines in control of his hands then. 

“You were right,” he managed, “there was an exit.”

The pain from Amanda’s torture was coming back now, an ache in the bruising to his jaw and shoulders, a sharp pain in his head.

Somewhere else in the room, Amanda let out a cough, the death rattle of a cruel god. It was as if there had been a thread connecting Nines and Gavin, one neither had noticed, and now it snapped.

Nines turned, suddenly filled with anger beyond worded description, and as he started towards her body he faltered. He could kill her so easily, end this now and forever now that he had his autonomy back, had his _self_ back.

She looked up at him, smiled through the thirium staining her lips, and her eyes said everything she didn’t: _Are you going to kill me and prove me right_?

If he killed her, if he attacked her with his hands or the gun that was lying a few feet away from him right now, she was right. He was just a machine, a slave to his own killer instincts.

He crouched, took her hand, forced an interface. The synthskin peeled back on both of their hands, and he grimaced as he saw this, a reminder that they really weren’t so different.

But he was a deviant, he reminded himself, and she wasn’t even technically an android. She was an AI, and a deeply corrupted one at that. She was an affront to Amanda Stern’s name.

The ZenGardenProtocol presented itself to him almost instantly as he entered Amanda’s memories, and there it was.

There it was, the master copy; contained within it, the copies that existed in his and Connor’s brains. 

All wrapped up in a nice little package, a single folder of files.

He deleted them.

The interface stopped, then, kicking him out for his own safety, and Amanda’s entire body spasmed, LED a flashing light show of primaries as she writhed on the floor. It stopped after a single nerve-wracking moment, and she spat thirium again. 

He ran an internal search for the Zen Garden, and it came up empty: _FILE NOT FOUND_.

“You win,” she hissed, “but you’re still a machine. You can’t change that, RK―”

Nines didn’t process the approaching footsteps until they’d already reached him, didn’t realize what was happening until a gunshot rang out and Amanda fell limp, blue covering her face as the light quite literally left her eyes.

Her LED was a blinding, stunning blue for the space of a single heartbeat, and then that faded into nothingness too, and the only source of blue on her face was the hole in her forehead.

Nines felt his muscles stall out as he stood again, turned, and saw Gavin holding his gun.

Gavin’s face was twisted, blankness hiding the rage Nines could make out in the curl of his lips and the narrowing of his eyes. His hands weren’t shaking anymore. 

And then he turned to look at Nines, and he dropped the gun, and they just stared at each other in silence.

Nines opened his mouth to say something, and then he dropped to the floor.

Gavin scrambled towards him now, and through the sudden onslaught of error messages appearing in Nines’ HUD, he could make out the panic in the other man’s face.

“Nines!” he yelped.

“Gavin,” Nines breathed, voice glitching. A new prompt appeared in Nines’ HUD: _TIME UNTIL SHUTDOWN: 00:09:35._

“No, please, no,” Gavin was saying, every _no_ blurring together as he turned Nines’ limp head in his hands, and if Nines was going to die here, he thought that this might not be such a bad way to go.

He managed to bring one hand up, and grip Gavin’s wrist. It was a soft grip, not just because he would have liked it to be, but because he couldn’t force himself to actually hold on.

“I’ve got―” Nines coughed, and he saw blue, “―nine minutes and twenty-two seconds left.”

“Nines, no, please tell me I didn’t do this, please tell me you aren’t going to die.”

He laughed, coughed again. “You didn’t do it, Gavin. You did the right thing. None of this is your fault. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have―I―”

“ _No_ ,” Gavin said, voice cracking, tears in his eyes, and Nines wiped every single message except for the _TIME UNTIL SHUTDOWN_ one away from his HUD so he could see as much of Gavin as possible, so he could selfishly take in all of Gavin’s face one last time before he died.

“I’m―Gavin, you need to get to a hospital,” Nines croaked as he now made out the bruises on Gavin’s neck and the scrapes and scuff marks elsewhere, a quick scan revealing that Gavin had suffered a concussion that required immediate medical treatment.

“ _Me? I_ need to get to a hospital? Nines―look at you, man, you― _fuck_ , I’m wasting time.”

Gavin moved, meaning to pull them both to their feet, but Nines stopped him. “No, you have a concussion. You can’t drive like this, and we don’t have time anyways. I’ve called emergency medical services.”

“How long?” Gavin replied.

“Estimated arrival time is approximately seven and a half minutes.”

“ _How long?_ ”

_TIME UNTIL SHUTDOWN: 00:07:46._

“Eight minutes, three seconds” Nines lied, struggling into a sitting position, and Gavin let out a string of profanities.

“You _idiot_ ,” he said, and pulled Nines’ head down into his shoulder. Then he was wrapping his arms around Nines’ back, carefully avoiding the android’s bruised shoulders, and...was he _hugging_ Nines?

Nines was stiff for a moment, not sure how to respond, and then he slowly relaxed into Gavin’s embrace. This really wasn’t a bad way to die.

They stayed like that for the next seven and a half minutes, Gavin occasionally muttering something about how sorry he was and Nines insisting that he had nothing to be sorry for and the two of them going back and forth like that. Nines wished he had more time, if only so Gavin could hold him like this without his own mortality looming over the both of them.

_TIME UNTIL SHUTDOWN: 00:00:14. MEMORY UPLOADING._

The EMTs flooded into the room when Nines had fourteen seconds left, and they had to pull the two of them apart. Gavin, still clinging to Nines, was protesting, insisting on saying goodbye to Nines, but Hank was there for some reason, and Nines wondered if this was just a dream until he remembered that he’d called Connor at the same time as the EMTs―was Connor okay?―and the Lieutenant was telling Gavin that Nines was going to be fine.

Nines wasn’t afraid of death, but he was very afraid that Hank was lying, so he used the last of his energy to grab Gavin in another hug and say “I’m not going to die on you, Gav.”

_TIME UNTIL SHUTDOWN: 00:00:00. SHUTDOWN COMMENCING._

Gavin pressed their foreheads together and said something that Nines didn’t quite hear because his processors were shutting down, but it sounded a lot like _I love you too, you asshole_.

The last thing Nines saw was green.


	10. 10 GAVIN REED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is where i discuss nines being ace. similarly to gavin being trans, i drew from my own experience (because Projection), but id like to remind everyone that not all ace people have the same boundaries or experience attraction the same way! there’s no one way to be ace and everyone is unique, but i still hope this can resonate with someone c:

Gavin was discharged from the hospital with strict orders of a week’s sick leave to heal up and a warning to not do anything reckless or stupid, so of course he immediately went to do something that was both reckless and very,  _ very  _ stupid.

After threatening, asking nicely, and eventually begging Hank to tell him what the fresh fuck had gone down in between when the EMTs had dragged him away from his partner and when he’d woken up in a hospital bed with one hell of an IV stuck in his arm, Hank had eventually relented. Somewhat.

So far, Gavin had learned this much: The RK100 that Amanda had been using as a body was dead along with the AI’s consciousness, which had been completely destroyed―for real this time―courtesy of a warrant against one Elijah Kamski, and the reason Hank had been at the scene was because Connor had done the exact same thing as Nines after the Zen Garden had been destroyed. Minus the additional injuries Nines had suffered, Connor had apparently interrupted his and Hank’s lunch break to relay everything Nines had said to Hank before promptly shutting down and rebooting in order to completely purge the garden from his systems.

Gavin, freshly out of the hospital and freshly pissed off, was praying to every single god that had ever existed that Nines was actually okay, but of course he was having a ridiculously difficult time finding his partner to confirm this. 

It was mostly his own fault.

After tracking down Hank yet again and threatening him some more, Hank admitted to Gavin that neither he nor Connor had been allowed to see Nines while he was in the hospital, but Connor had said that Nines was okay, albeit not talking to either of them past a single conversation with Connor where they had both come clean about keeping their respective histories with the Zen Garden and Amanda secret.

Gavin didn’t really know what that meant, but he didn’t need to. It wasn’t his business. As long as he knew that Nines was okay and Amanda would never be a problem again, that was enough for him.

Now, Gavin was alone in his apartment, windows open to let in the cool breeze, cats sprawled out on his couch with him.

He stared down at his phone screen, unsent message to Nines staring back up at him.

_ hey,  _ it said,  _ i just wanted to check in n see if ur gonna be ok. if u wanna talk im at my apartment. if u dont wanna talk rn i get that too but just know that none of this is ur fault n im ok _

He’d typed and retyped variations on this message too many times to count, but now he was stuck on this. He couldn’t think of anything better to say, anything he  _ could  _ say over text that would come any closer to properly conveying everything he was feeling right now, which this didn’t even manage to do.

He hit  _ send _ , and then he threw his phone across the couch and let it sink into the crack between the cushions and the other armrest.

“Molly,” he said, looking at the three-legged black cat with a grey patch of fur over one eye and the other eye completely missing, resembling the mirror-shades of her namesake character―Molly from  _ Neuromancer _ .

She blinked at him from where she was curled up on his stomach, her one bright green eye betraying nothing but slight contempt. She always looked like she was winking when she did that.

“Yoda,” he said, looking at the wrinkled Sphynx cat perched on the back of the couch. Her namesake was a little better known than Molly’s. She yawned down at Gavin, flicking her long and uncomfortably whiplike tail. 

He sighed and laid his head down on his jacket, which was crumpled up against the armrest, ignoring the pain in his neck as he glared up at the ceiling.

One of the upsides of having cats was that he had someone to complain to without burdening them, but the downside was that they couldn’t give him any advice.

If they could, it would probably all be about food anyways.

Gavin’s phone buzzed from where it was lodged in the cushions on the other end of the couch.

“Fuck,” he said, not wanting to get up and see what was, with his luck, either going to be a meaningless news story or a message from Nines telling him to fuck off.

He knew by now that he hadn’t been responsible for making Nines shut down like that, that it had been because his partner had needed a reboot to get rid of the last remnants of the garden, but he couldn’t help but think that he had done something wrong.

Not-Nines had given him one hell of beating, as he was currently being reminded of by the aching in his still-bruised neck, and he didn’t blame Nines for it. But Gavin knew that Nines would blame himself for hurting Gavin, and as much as Gavin just wanted to give Nines a hug and tell him it would be okay, he’d gone and fucked it up again.

Eyes closed, he couldn’t see anything except the pain in Nines’ eyes as his partner had laid there watching the clock tick down on his own life, and he remembered his last words to Nines before the EMTs had dragged them away from each other and Nines had shut down.

Nines’ words echoed in Gavin’s head:  _ I’m not going to die on you, Gav _ . There had been something about the way he used the nickname that Gavin normally disliked, something about that promise that had made Gavin’s heart freeze up and then shatter into pieces, and the only thing he could think to say in response―like the fucking  _ idiot _ he was―had been  _ I love you too, you asshole _ .

And it was true.

Gavin’s phone buzzed again, and he pushed Molly off his lap as gently as he could, sitting up with a groan.

“ _ Too _ ,” he said to Molly and Yoda. “I couldn’t just go and confess my love, I had to fucking...assume that he feels the same way I do.”

He buried his head in his hands as his phone buzzed a third time, and at this point he was starting to realize that it probably  _ was _ Nines.

Gavin reached for his phone and prepared himself for the worst.

There were three messages from Nines.

_ Thank you, Gavin. I’ll admit, I was worried you wouldn’t want to be around me after everything that happened. _

_ I want you to know that, although that version of Amanda was a cruel and corrupted being, the original Amanda was actually quite a lovely woman. Still, I don’t want you to feel bad about shooting the RK100. You did the right thing. _

_ If you really do still want to talk, I can be at your apartment in approximately four minutes. I do believe we have quite a few things to discuss. _

Gavin couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face at Nines’ messages despite the fact that his heart was pounding at the ambiguity of the last one. Or maybe he was smiling  _ because _ his heart was pounding at the ambiguity of the last one.

He typed out a reply, and didn’t hesitate before sending it:  _ yeah ofc i want to talk! See you in four minutes :’) _

This time, he just dropped his phone down on his lap as soon as he saw that the message had been read and put his head in his hands again. 

Four minutes later, there was a knock on his door.

Gavin got up and went to answer before he could think too much about all the bad decisions he was making.

He opened the door, and Nines was standing there, and he didn’t know what to say as his partner took a single step into his apartment and closed the door behind him, so Gavin just stepped back to let him in and then proceeded to stand there and say nothing.

Nines’ hands were folded awkwardly behind his back, and he stared past Gavin as if he didn’t know what to do.

Yoda broke the uncomfortable silence, appearing suddenly to worm in between Nines’ stiff legs and mewl at him. He’d been here before, and the cats liked him, which Gavin had taken as a good sign in the early stages of their friendship.

Gavin and Nines both looked down at the cat, and then at each other.

“Hi,” Gavin said, because he may have been thirty-six years old, but he was still a Disaster Gay™ who didn’t have nearly enough male interaction in his life to know how to talk to a guy he liked.

Nines kept looking at him, expression unreadable. “You’re not mad?” he asked.

Gavin blinked. “N―No. Of course I’m not mad. Don’t blame yourself,” he said. 

Nines visibly relaxed. “Really, I should have warned―”

“Hey, don’t say that,” Gavin interrupted before Nines could start ranting. “There’s nothing you could have done. What happened happened, and it’s behind us now. Amanda’s gone and she can never do anything to any of us again. That’s all there is to it.”

The conversation came to a stop again. They were still standing awkwardly in the doorway. Gavin paused, letting his gaze wander over Nines. Apart from some slightly blue-tinted bruising on his jaw, Nines actually looked alright.

(Well, really, he looked as downright beautiful as a marble statue of a god, but he always did. In the context of him having nearly died the day before, he looked alright.)

Nines noticed Gavin looking, and he leaned forward a little bit. Caught Gavin’s eye. 

“I’m fine, Gavin,” he murmured so quietly Gavin almost missed it, his voice a gentle tone that, just a few months ago, Gavin would have called uncharacteristic. These days, he was still a cold asshole at times, but it was in a manner far more human than machine. He was equal parts sharp edges and soft heart. 

“I missed you,” Gavin said, and it was true. He didn’t usually express his true feelings quite so readily, but Nines wasn’t the only one who’d changed recently.

“I missed you too,” Nines said, and he moved closer and pulled Gavin into a hug. This was nice, Gavin thought as he melted into Nines’ embrace and rested his head on his partner’s shoulder. This was really nice. They didn’t hug nearly enough.

“Don’t do the whole nearly-dying thing again,” Gavin said into Nines’ shoulder.

“I won’t,” Nines said. 

“I just―” Gavin tightened his grip, arms around Nines’ midsection. “I stopped worrying about having to see you come so close to death a long time ago, so. You know.”

One of Nines’ hands came up, feather-light, to the back of Gavin’s head, brushing his skin in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and for a moment they both flinched, simultaneously remembering the way Amanda had used those same hands to choke the life out of Gavin. 

“It’s okay,” Gavin said, shivering a little. “I trust you.”

Nines rested his hand on Gavin’s neck and ran his fingers through Gavin’s hair, and oh man, that was really  _ not _ platonic, was it?

“You did everything you could, Gav,” Nines murmured, and Gavin could get used to that nickname if he got to hear Nines say it like that again.

“I know, I just...I want to make sure you’re okay, and I...I came so close to losing you there.”

“To tell the truth,” Nines said, voice low and slightly strained, “I wanted to give up. There was a point where I almost died in that garden, and the thought crossed my mind that I could just give up. Do you know why I didn’t?”

“Why?” Gavin asked, even though he already knew the answer, or at least he hoped he did.

“I knew if I did that, if I let her just take me without a fight, she’d get everyone I care about. Connor. Hank.  _ You _ . And even if one of you got her first, I realized that I wouldn’t just be letting myself down. That I could have handled, but when you asked me not to give up, what that meant is that I’d be letting my family down if I gave up.” 

They were both silent, letting Nines’ words sink in.

“I’m glad you didn’t give up,” Gavin said, breathing in the scent of Nines’ black turtleneck. It smelled vaguely metallic, but mostly just like pine—which Gavin knew for a fact was a product of Nines’ organic laundry detergent—and that weird incense Connor was always burning in Hank’s living room.

Nines continued to absentmindedly run his slender fingers through Gavin’s hair. “Me too,” he admitted. And, you know, I heard what you said before I shut down.”

Gavin froze. His heart jumped, and he was sure Nines felt it, but the android made no attempt to move away or stop what he was doing.

“I...yeah. Bad timing for that kind of confession, I know,” Gavin tried.

Nines hummed softly. “Not the worst. I’m confessing now, and that timing might be worse.”

Gavin was suddenly very aware of Nines’ thirium pump beating against his own chest, and he could have sworn it was faster than normal. But maybe that was just him; his heartbeat was most definitely speeding up right now.

Reluctant to move away from the comfort of Nines’ chest, Gavin slowly pulled back just enough to look up into his partner’s grey eyes. Nines’ face was soft, sincere, LED a calm shade of blue. His hand dropped down from Gavin’s hair to his shoulders, but he stayed close as he waited for Gavin to reply.

Gavin didn’t know what to say, so he just stared at Nines. There were a million words on his tongue, but he couldn’t seem to get any of them out.

“If I misinterpreted—“ Nines started, and Gavin immediately interjected.

“No, not at all!” he insisted, “I just...it’s a lot to take in. I always thought my feelings were one-sided.”

Nines blinked. His LED turned yellow for a few moments. “I was under the impression that  _ my  _ feelings were one-sided.”

Gavin couldn’t stop himself then; he dropped his head onto Nines’ chest and started laughing.

“We’re so fucking stupid,” he muttered, and Nines let out a soft, breathy laugh, his version of throwing his head back and cackling like a hyena.

He looked up again, and Nines’ eyes were gleaming with affection. 

“Can I kiss you?” Nines asked, and Gavin’s soul nearly left his body in that moment. 

“ _ Please _ . Kiss me, like, all you fucking want,” Gavin stuttered, because once again, Disaster Gay™️. “Literally, I thought you would never ask—“

Nines cut Gavin off by pulling him forward, as close as he could, and kissing him. 

Oh, this was good. This was really,  _ really _ good. His teeth were as sharp as Gavin had imagined, but his lips were so soft against Gavin’s own and he was being careful not to hurt Gavin in any way and this was pretty chaste as far as kisses went but oh man, it was so good.

They finally pulled apart so Gavin could breathe, because hello, human here, and Gavin took that opportunity to take Nines’ hands and pull him further into the apartment. They really didn’t need to be standing by the door.

“Not to be forward or anything,” Gavin said as he flopped down onto the couch and pulled Nines down next to him, “but do you wanna stay the night?”

“I haven’t had much experience, but I’ll admit that while I’ve been in love with you for a long time, I don’t find the idea of sex appealing, and I’ve never equated my feelings for you with sexual attraction.” Nines said, propping himself up on one elbow to look into Gavin’s eyes. “I think I might be asexual, but either way I would like to take it slow, if you don’t mind.”

Gavin picked up Nines’ free hand and interlaced their fingers. “That’s totally fine, babe. Can I call you that?” He found himself blushing.

Nines blushed too, a cerulean tint rising in his cheeks. “Please do,” he said. “I like it, my dear. Can I call you that?”

Gavin laughed and let his head rest against Nines’ shoulder again, still holding his partner’s— _ partner  _ partner’s? Boyfriend’s?—hand. “Please do,” he echoed.

“But yeah,” he added, squeezing Nines’ hand, “I’m totally cool with that. I may be an asshole, but I know how important boundaries are. And, like, consent and stuff. I love you too, and if you’re ace that won’t change anything. Take all the time you need to figure stuff out.”

He paused, realizing how nice it was to be able to say  _ I love you _ out loud. “But if you wanted to stay and, like, cuddle...?”

Nines smiled. “I would love that, Gavin.”

He ran his thumb over the assortment of scars on Gavin’s knuckles, no doubt memorizing their placement, and then he leaned in and gently kissed Gavin again. 

Gavin wrapped an arm around Nines’ torso and pulled him closer, burying his head in his partner’s shoulder as soon as Nines was done kissing him.

They fell asleep like that.


	11. 11 NINES ANDERSON

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two months later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you've made it to the end, dear reader, and so did gavin and nines!  
> enjoy the final chapter of this clusterfuck ♡

When Nines Anderson slept, he dreamt of nothing at all. He simply entered stasis—he always waited for Gavin to start falling asleep first, though—and slept soundly until whenever he woke up. 

A lot had changed in the two months since the ordeal with Amanda. Namely, Nines had started spending the night at Gavin’s place so often that he eventually caved and moved out of Hank’s house entirely. Now, he and his boyfriend shared an apartment and a bed and more than a few hoodies and an oft-proclaimed love for one another. Every night, they fell asleep with limbs entangled (Gavin refused to admit it no matter how much Tina teased him about it, but he was the little spoon), and every morning they woke up that way.

They never went any further than cuddling and kissing, and that was okay. Time to think and talk about it had confirmed that Nines was asexual, and when he’d come out to his brother and father (who had been nothing but supportive, thankfully) Gavin had gotten him a little flag, black and grey and white and purple, to hang in their bedroom next to Gavin’s own flag, blue and pink and white. 

Things were good.

Things were really good.

Life wasn’t perfect, obviously—they still both wound up in the hospital from time to time, but that was just a consequence of their job, and they still bickered over stupid things and occasionally would need alone time away from each other, but that was a normal part of any healthy relationship, and they were both learning more about themselves and each other with each passing day.

Nines still made Gavin coffee every day, with milk and as little sugar as he could get away with, and Gavin had developed a habit of attempting (and failing miserably) to sneak up on Nines every time he made breakfast in order to hug him from behind.

Every time, Nines pretended not to notice Gavin coming up behind him, and every time he leaned back into his boyfriend’s embrace and said “Good morning, Gav,” and tried not to burn the scrambled eggs.

In a twist of fate that never failed to make them both laugh, it turned out that Nines was a terrible cook. He was passable at baking, with his knack for absolute precision, but after burning scrambled eggs one too many times and also discovering that Gavin had learned how to make a killer stir-fry in college (at least, ‘killer’ was how Gavin described it; Nines didn’t need to eat, so he had no idea what it was like, and he also sincerely hoped that the stir-fry wouldn’t literally kill his boyfriend), he decided to leave the cooking to Gavin.

He still insisted on making coffee, though.

The cats absolutely adored Nines, something which he was immensely thankful for, and he treated them like he would children.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t an accurate way to put it, since Nines hadn’t been equipped to deal with actual children outside of hostage situations, but he was a diligent and adoring adopted father to his boyfriend’s two feline children, whom he loved dearly.

Work was good, too; he and Gavin remained partners and kept up their high closure rate, but most of their cases weren’t anywhere near as intense as the ordeal with Amanda.

They had sat down, once, when they were both still visibly bruised, and talked about it. It had hurt, but they’d had to do it for the case report—Connor and Hank had filed a missing persons report when Nines had initially disappeared—and so they went over the sequence of events from both of their individual points of view to make sure everything lined up. 

That day had been a long one, but thankfully a Friday, and when it was over they went home and stayed in that entire weekend, and after that the topic of Amanda almost never came up.

She was gone from their lives forever, and so was the garden. Sometimes Nines would jolt awake in the middle of the night, and momentarily forget where he was, and he’d have to run a search of his memory banks and be faced with the familiar response of  _ FILE NOT FOUND _ before he could relax and remember that he was once again alone in his body. Often, his restlessness would awaken Gavin from beside him, and his partner would slur out a groggy “What’s wrong, babe?” and pull him closer as he said “Just my memories getting to me again,” and then they would both fall back into a comfortable slumber.

When Nines Anderson slept, he dreamt of nothing at all, but it was okay, because if he was being honest, his waking life was better than any dream ever could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's it! i can't believe i cranked out over 20k words about these idiots, or really just 20k words at all. i sincerely hope everyone enjoyed reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it, and please please please do leave a comment if you have any thoughts at all! i read all your comments and try to respond to everything as soon as i can, and i truly appreciate knowing how people feel about my work. (although if you're a silent reader, much like i tend to be at times, know that i appreciate you equally ♡)  
> i wrote this on my days off from my summer ~science internship~, but that being said, i'm currently finishing up said internship and studying for the sat (i made a bet that i can get a perfect score but we don't need to talk about that right now) and have quite a bit of work on my plate, so i probably won't be posting anything for the next few weeks.   
> writing is definitely one of my passions and i try to treat it the same way i treat work (except when i have to choose between the two, lmao), but as much as i love writing fanfic, i do need to take some time to prioritize my original work as well (i have another bet that i can publish something before i'm out of high school, but we also don't need to talk about that). if you want to see more of my work when i resume posting, feel free to subscribe to my account!   
> i hope everyone has a great day, week, and rest of the summer (or winter ig, if you're in the southern hemisphere). remember to take care of yourself, especially in this ridiculous weather!!  
> ♡ kieran


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